Only Right
by Adahn
Summary: Jacen Solo instructs Ben Skywalker in the art of gardening. Post-LOTF:Inferno AU. Re-edited 8/14/2012.
1. Prologue

**FOREWORD**

Sometimes a project takes on a life of its own.

If you are a new reader who has stumbled upon this severely out of fashion story (post-what? Jacen who?) then I feel somehow obligated to try and sell you on the words that follow. That is a fairly difficult proposition; believe me when I say that I am deeply aware of this. Still, let me try.

This is the story of Jacen Solo, eldest son of Han Solo and Leia Organa, two characters with whom I presuppose nominal familiarity—it is a small wonder of the age that one can probably take at least this much for granted. Jacen Solo is a creature of post-Return of the Jedi Star Wars novels. He remains quite controversial within the fanbase for a variety of reasons, even though I have been told that he was actually killed off some time ago. Some of these controversies are related to his time as a villain and many more are related to his time as a hero. He is an interesting problem on many fronts. This is a story that explores that problem in detail and endeavors to suggest a final reconciliation.

At the heart of all these controversies is this: the broad arc of Jacen Solo is probably as close as Star Wars will ever come to experiencing an epistemological crisis. There is a rich meta-plot in how authors have reacted to the character over time, and this meta-plot is at least as interesting to me as the strict history of the character.

The arc of that meta-plot seems to me to be this: Jacen Solo was a hero, and his philosophy was heroic, when the authors were most willing to defy Lucas fiat—or, at least, when the eye of Lucas was elsewhere. Jacen Solo became a villain, and his philosophy became villainous, when the leash was once again tightened. There is much more to be written about the use of the character as a vehicle for an ugly strain of anti-intellectualism among certain authors than I have space to go into here. Likewise for the utterly bizarre co-opting of the character as a vehicle for frustration against Tony Blair and George Bush.

In any case there has been a battle over the philosophical orientation of Star Wars carried out with Jacen Solo as the battlefield. In the canon the outcome was ultimately the most reactionary one imaginable. Jacen Solo—the doubter, the seeker, the wanderer and wonderer who questioned received dogma—suffered a reductio ad Hitlerum in everything but name.

In this story I make my attempt to elaborate a more robust understanding of the character and the meaning of the battle that was waged over him.

If you are not passingly familiar with the history of Jacen Solo then trying to understand what I have put down may be daunting. Toward the end of ameliorating this, and also as a general refresher for those who might only distantly recall the sum of events up through _Inferno_, the increasingly dated Troy Denning novel after which this story diverges from the accepted continuity of Star Wars, I have taken it upon myself to add a brief prologue that will help to ground you in the characters and events that lead up to my intrusion into the franchise in what I hope to be a useful way.

This story diverges from the canon, such as it is, around the point at which (in this humble nobody's opinion) the character of Jacen Solo went irrevocably off the rails in terms of characterization. I do not mean to say that what had been written of Jacen Solo in Legacy of the Force before my intrusion was at all consistent or even coherent. I only mean to suggest that what followed was not even salvageable. Some have argued the problems with the character are structural and endemic, and go all the way back to early New Jedi Order days. I am not in that camp, as one of the apparent few who read those books at a time in my life when I was deeply sympathetic to Jacen's philosophical struggle with choice and action. Some would say that the many problems with the character are seeded in the lurching changes undertaken during Denning's Dark Nest trilogy, and I do think that's a lot closer to the truth.

Full disclosure: I remain firmly convinced that Matthew Stover's _Traitor_ is perhaps the single most piercing, redemptive, consummately _promising_ Star Wars story ever put to pen aside from the original trilogy, and everything that has followed since its publication constitutes a rather tragic denial of that novel's enormous and unique potential for transformation. If you do happen to read this story and enjoy it without foreknowledge of the character and the novels, _Traitor _is easily my strongest recommendation to you. After all, this story is in large part rumination on and paean to that book, the publication of which still strikes me as frankly miraculous.

But if the vast majority of the previous paragraph is incomprehensible to you, then rest assured that you are probably better off for it. This is an area of expertise that I am deeply ambivalent about, and it is my meager hope that you may understand and even enjoy this story even if you know little about the decidedly intestinal labyrinth of the post Return of the Jedi canon.

This story is many things to me. A friend of mine once called its genre post-Star Wars, in the sense that the post-modern is a reaction to the modern. Only Right is how I coped with the fact that a franchise that I had grown up with and followed slavishly had at some intangible moment turned from something I loved into something that I could no longer stand.

This story struggles with the seams that had started to fray in the comfortable and conservative assumptions of the Star Wars universe when I began, and were enormous, irrevocable tears—an utter alienation—by the time I finished.

This story struggles with many seeming paradoxes, not least of which being that Jacen Solo, as characterization catastrophe, as author soup, as indeterminate being lost in the mire of muddy motivation and inconsistent, faltering, futile action, is so profoundly _human _in a way that so many other characters in latter day Star Wars so rarely are. I discovered as I wrote, really, that I wanted ambiguity, complexity, lies of all kinds, and finally, above all, endings. I loathed—still loathe—the idea that Star Wars will almost certainly grind on in its staid state for my lifetime and then some. Because I am a very stubborn and foolish person, I made the undeniably ridiculous decision to have a go at resolving all of that myself.

But here is a truth that is not acknowledged enough in the era of sequel upon sequel, on into eternity: _stories have to end_. Among other things, this story I have written is about how people deal with the concept of infinity and the inevitability of ending. This is, among other things, the story of how I disengaged from the frustrating and fickle continuity of Star Wars. Full disclosure: I have long since ceased to follow the franchise in general. I haven't really looked back; what little I hear from friends who maintain casual interest gives me no temptation to return whatever. I have come to find my own fiction significantly more interesting than theirs. Certainly, I have come to strongly suspect that I thought about these characters and this scenario much more than certain authors ever did.

I think I shouldn't understate that for me, this is the final story in the Star Wars saga.

My goal when I set out on this fool's journey was simple: I'd write a three part story about the breaking of Ben Skywalker, son of Luke and Mara Jade, at the hands of Jacen Solo—this surely at no more than, say, eight thousand words, I find myself highly amused to recall in retrospect. By writer's fiat, I imagined what would happen if Jacen Solo woke up one day and became an effective villain. My job became to somehow take a character that had been fumbled in terms of characterization, effectiveness, consistency, and above all in power and reach, and congeal him into something convincing, seductive, and profoundly dangerous in an extremely and necessarily constricted space. I went in thinking I could make him coherent, but in the long term I think I abandoned that idea and embraced Jacen Solo as a man driven and defined by a complex constellation of totally contradictory ideas—not just because it was the only way to reconcile him with what had been written before, but because it was so much truer to the way people are.

At any rate I thought I would take this character who was supposed to be an enormous threat and write him as if he were an enormous threat, beginning from the very first, with the definitive act that sets this story into motion. I would take what I liked (and I should be clear on this: for better or for worse there were things I liked about the character all the way through _Inferno_) and emphasize that, and try to fill in the many blanks on the fly, with only the barest structure plotted out ahead of time. Even that structure warped radically as I went. Insofar as other characters were to enter into what I wrote, I thought that I would always be concerned centrally with their reactions and resistance to the encroaching influence of Jacen Solo and the entire mass of epistemological baggage he embodies.

I began all this with only the scarcest experience in actually moving these strange characters that were so much the accretion of so many other writers. All of it strikes me as quixotic in retrospect, and as evidence I offer the fact that years on I am writing a foreword to this supposedly long finished story trying to justify this very strange thing I have made. Everything I touched became more complicated, every structure I came into contact with shifted as I used it, and my reach necessarily expanded, and each character I used became part of my mission to reconcile a more coherent vision. Things spiraled out into the eighty-something thousand word testament to my own neuroses that is here offered for your perusal. I write a great deal, but for nothing so much as _Only Right _have I returned over and over to change it or mull over it or just parse it, line by line, making minuscule changes that madden me by way of absence when I look back at old versions of the story. The small triumphs of tweaking and tuning are, frankly, addictive to the point of becoming cause for concern. In some small way, I know how Lucas feels; it's a scary thing.

Sometimes I feel as if I cannot make myself understood. Maybe he does, too.

But listen. If you'll let me, I intend to make you unsure who is a hero and who is a villain. I intend to show you characters who can _change _in response to the things that happen to them—don't doubt that I will show you characters to whom things happen. I have been called overly cruel by those who have read this story in the past. I maintain that I am merciful insofar as I am willing to let these characters, so long bound in holding patterns, go free. I hope that this story will surprise you.

But I must let the words, if you choose to see them, make my case from here. I grow weary of returning time and time again to Jacen Solo and his garden, when I have so many other gardens to tend. I have been told that he is dead. I remain unconvinced. He lives in my memory not as the Jacen Solo of this story, though I have come to love that character in my way, nor as the Jacen Solo of Legacy of the Force, though I have come to accept him for what he is.

Jacen Solo still lives for me—lives in me—as the traitor who taught the World Brain of Yuuzhan'tar that that the galaxy was full of love.

Listen. Stories have to end. Let it be said that I have set this story down before you, supine, uprooted, and let the judgment come as it may. What more can a gardener do with a flower he has grown?

―

**PROLOGUE**

_History would be wonderful thing—if it were only true.  
Leo Tolstoy_

―

Listen. There is a galaxy, and there is a war.

There is a Confederacy, and there is a Galactic Alliance, and there will be a reckoning between them.

There is the Force, and there are those who believe that it is of two minds, light and dark.

There are a few hundred Jedi who subscribe to that view. They are led by the greatest Jedi who ever lived, Luke Skywalker.

Luke Skywalker is an old man, now, a far cry from the naive boy who, wreathed with the auspices of destiny, led the rebellion that toppled Darth Vader's Empire. That rebellion, with time, overthrew Palpatine's Empire and became the New Republic. Years later, that New Republic withered and died under the weight of the most terrible war in galactic history.

Luke Skywalker has spent the better part of his life thus far patiently nurturing the Jedi back to life from out of the seed of himself, through each setback and each small triumph, teaching and leading and growing in the Force. The unprecedented power that has developed in him would be profoundly terrifying in the hands of anyone less calm, less even-tempered, less utterly in sync with the universe.

As he rebuilt the Jedi, Luke Skywalker rebuilt his family. He took a wife in the former Imperial assassin Mara Jade; together they had a son they named Ben Skywalker in tribute to Obi-Wan Kenobi, the only Jedi in the memory of the Order that could hold a candle to Luke himself for consummate greatness.

However, his wife is dead, and no power Luke Skywalker possesses will bring her back. His son is lost to him, though Luke Skywalker has yet to learn of it.

He will.

When he does, there will be a reckoning.

The death of Luke's wife and the loss of Luke's son are both the work of a single Sith, the first true Sith since the death of Anakin Skywalker broke the chain of the Rule of Two. He is Darth Caedus, but to the world outside he hides in the cloak of his old name, Jacen Solo.

It has not been so very long since Jacen Solo was considered one of the greatest hopes for the future of the Jedi, a visionary second only to Luke himself in understanding of the Force. It has not been so very long since those who had accepted his radical case for the true and profound one-ness of the Force, the internal rather than external nature of the dark side, constituted a significant minority within the Order. He is a war hero, instrumental in the triumph of the infant Galactic Alliance over the extragalactic invasion by the Yuuzhan Vong that destroyed the New Republic and came dangerously close to exterminating native galactic society entirely. Jacen Solo was the one who killed the true Supreme Overlord of the Yuuzhan Vong, Onimi, in single combat, in a moment of utter blazing transcendence in the Force that drove the young man—he was sixteen when the war began—to spend the next five years of his life devouring the lore of the galaxy's far-flung independent Force using groups. Even in those days he was very far from his childhood in the Jedi academy on Yavin IV, where he had loved to take care of animals, where his enormous empathy for all living things had been obvious to all those who knew him.

He is much farther now.

At present Jacen Solo is the only living son of Han Solo and Leia Organa. He has lately learned that his parents consider him to be dead to them. For his part, he has endeavored several times in recent months to make them dead to him in a more literal sense. He is estranged from his twin sister Jaina. They had begun to drift apart years previous, but the break was total when he saw to her court-martial and dishonorable discharge from the Galactic Alliance Navy after an incident where she refused his order to open fire on a ship full of civilians during an engagement early in the war between the Alliance and the Confederacy.

Jacen Solo has a daughter, lately seven years of age. Her name is Allana, and she does not know who her father is. He has a wife. Her name is Tenel Ka, and she does not know what her husband has become—she knows he is a monster, but she does not know that the monster is named Sith. Tenel Ka, too, has declared Jacen Solo dead; she abandoned him in the middle of a pitched battle over Kashyyyk, a world that was preparing to secede from the Galactic Alliance and join the Confederacy. Jacen had given the order to firebomb it from orbit.

Only a few weeks ago, he murdered Luke Skywalker's wife, Jedi Master Mara Jade Skywalker. She discovered what he was becoming and she endeavored to stop him, and she narrowly failed. His triumph over her was the crowning sacrifice, out of which came the epiphany of his true name, the beginning of real Sith mastery. But he has sacrificed many others. There was Nelani Dinn, a Jedi who had witnessed Jacen acquiesce to the offer of apprenticeship to Lumiya, the Sith acolyte in waiting and longtime enemy of Luke Skywalker who set him on his current path. There have been untold hundreds of thousands among the diaspora of Correllia and Bothawui, first among the seceded worlds of the Confederacy, who he has seen consigned to internment camps. There are as of yet no concrete figures about how many have died in his no-tolerance actions against the civilian populations of seceding worlds, let alone the actions he has taken against enemy combatants. Estimates of the former alone easily run into the millions.

That is not common knowledge. Darth Caedus is very much in the business of information control. For all his waxing power, his position is nonetheless precarious, even ignoring the fact that the Jedi are coming for his life—and will be coming much faster when they find out that Ben Skywalker is gone. He is not only a Sith, he is the co-Chief of State of the Galactic Alliance, lately propped up in a bloodless coup that expelled the previous and elected occupant of the position, Cal Omas, from office on falsified charges of high treason. He is as vulnerable to attack from the back as he is from the front—his co-conspirator and opposite, Admiral Cha Niathal of the Galactic Alliance Navy, would happily see him eliminated at the earliest convenience. The feeling is mutual. Their uneasy armistice is sustained only by the fact that if their profoundly illegal contrivances to gain high office were to be revealed, both would fall far and fast.

But he is also not so vulnerable as she thinks. He leads the secret police, the Galactic Alliance Guard, which is ultimately loyal to him alone and exists in a state of operational freedom tantamount in all but name to immunity from the law. It is in this capacity that Jacen Solo has earned the rank of Colonel, and in this capacity that he commands the Star Destroyer _Anakin Solo_, named in tribute to his deceased younger brother, who died fighting the Yuuzhan Vong. Darth Caedus has lately discovered his prodigious faculty for politics. He has constructed an impenetrable shield of bylaw and amendment around himself and his true allies in the Guard and in the Senate that few even realize exists. And he remains unflaggingly popular with his core constituency in the wealthy, urbanized galactic core. On Coruscant, the capital world-city of the Galactic Alliance, he is adored by the vast majority of the trillion-plus sentient population. To them he is a stalwart defender of the planet's safety and interests against the Confederacy, which has frequently resorted to acts of terrorism against the populations of Alliance worlds and plainly intends to create a new map of galactic power that would break the vice grip of the core on galactic society. It has been Confederate terrorism, and even more so the specter of acts of Confederate terrorism, that has enabled Jacen to claim emergency powers in leaps and bounds and entrench himself still deeper in nominally democratic Galactic Alliance politics.

The capitol system of the Confederacy, Corellia, is home to the galaxy's last superweapon, the ancient and massive gravity well manipulator known as Centerpoint, which is capable of annihilating entire worlds. Jacen himself led a commando mission at the war's outset—then still a loyal and well-regarded Jedi—to disable it, but the sabotage was not permanent. Centerpoint's inevitable return to operational status hangs over the entire conflict like an executioner's axe. The leadership of the Confederacy has equivocated about their progress in repairing the weapon and their willingness to utilize it to turn the tide of the conflict. It remains unclear whether that has scared more away from Solo's web than it has driven in.

In light of the dismal political situation the Jedi have concluded that reform from within the Alliance is impossible for the time being. And so they have chosen to abandon the Galactic Alliance, which the extended Skywalker clan was instrumental in founding, so long as Jacen Solo remains in power. As a consequence of mass desertion on the field of battle and stated intent to assassinate a nominally legally appointed head of state, the Jedi have been labeled a terrorist organization by the Alliance and are actively hunted for high treason. Captured Jedi face stark fates—most simply disappear, wiped from the face of the galaxy as if they had never existed but as a name in the Jedi archive. The Jedi strike quickly and secretly from extremely clandestine refuge worlds and try not to acknowledge the full precariousness of their position. Fundamentally, they hope to cut the problem off at its head with Jacen and spearhead armistice between the two sides afterwards. A few among the Jedi are beginning to realize that things are not even remotely so simple.

One agent of discord in all this is Alema Rar, a fallen Jedi thought dead at Leia Organa's hands during the Dark Nest Crisis five years previous. In truth she survived her terrible injuries, if enormously scarred physically and profoundly broken mentally, and has returned to the galaxy at large with an all-consuming vendetta against the Skywalker clan which crippled her and so nearly killed her. She is among the very few who have any real inkling of what Jacen Solo has become, having inadvertently discovered Solo's apprenticeship to Lumiya in the course of a failed attempt on his life. Owing to Mara Jade's death by Alema's signature weapon, a poisoned blowdart, she remains the prime suspect in the murder case. She has motive and ability, after all. She is the one who rescued Jacen from the disastrous Battle of Kashyyyk, and she is the one who informed him of the existence of a shadowy group of Sith heretics based out of the Sith tomb-world of Korriban who upheld a Rule of One great Sith over untold numbers of lesser apprentices. She lives and continues in her solitary quest for reprisal by virtue of her knowledge of Allana, Solo's daughter, whose parentage she has contrived to reveal in the case of her death.

This would put Allana in mortal danger. Allana's mother, Tenel Ka, is a Jedi and childhood friend of Jacen who has inherited the queenship of the Hapes Cluster, a wealthy and powerful bloc of worlds with politics characterized by ruthless intrigue among a class of bloodthirsty nobles. If Allana's parentage were to become common knowledge, then both mother and daughter would be in mortal danger; hatred of Jedi within the Hapes Cluster is omnipresent, and the knowledge that the heir to the throne is progeny of the Jedi's most infamous clan would topple her rule in a bloody coup. Jacen Solo tells himself that even after Tenel Ka's betrayal, there is one thing he will not compromise, one dream he will not give up in his journey into an ambiguous universe, the reason redeeming all the awful things he has done: it is all to create a galactic government that can guarantee their safety.

Jacen Solo believes that he is Sith and also something more than Sith, the genesis of a new and better way within the ancient line of masters and apprentices. He hopes to synthesize the teachings of Skywalker and the Jedi, Sith learning from Lumiya, and the vast array of arcane Force lore he has picked up in his long journeys to the remotest Force-using groups of the galaxy into a greater truth, a truth that encompasses the totality of the Force.

But the teachings closest to his heart have always been those imparted to him by Vergere. Vergere, a Jedi of the Old Republic, was spared Order 66 only by a sixty year period of captivity among the Yuuzhan Vong, who took her during one of their first scouting expeditions into the known galaxy. In turn she took Jacen, shattered by the death of his brother Anakin at the hands of the invaders, and tortured him, and taught him. She was the one who introduced him to the Embrace of Pain, a living Yuuzhan Vong torture device to end all torture devices. On Yuuzhan Vong occupied Coruscant, rechristened and reshaped by the invaders into the ferociously beautiful world-jungle of Yuuzhan'tar, she presided over his transformation from boy into man. Under her, he learned about flowers and weeds and gardens, choice and action, all within a labyrinth of riddles and lies and truths run together.

She advanced a simple but phenomenally important argument: what the Jedi called the dark side was not an external entity but an internal one, that the Force was unified and did not take sides. There was no devil in the Force making men like Darth Vader dance; good and evil began in the individual, not in the Force, which was never anything more or less than the collective mass of all living energy. Vergere would sacrifice her life for Jacen at the Battle of Ebaq 9, turning point of the war, not long after they escaped together from Yuuzhan'tar. Lumiya would later tell him that Vergere was Sith, and that claim would give him one more reason to turn away from all that he had known. Jacen in truth remains unconvinced, but he cannot deny the possibility. Lumiya, for her part, now tells him nothing at all. She, too, died for him, in a battle with Luke Skywalker she had contrived to buy the newly born Darth Caedus time.

With her death, he is finally truly alone with his name and his task. But he is one Sith, bound in the Rule of Two, and he is now a master without an apprentice. Were he to die in the near future—a possibility that he recognizes is rapidly becoming more likely—there would be no one to take up his cause. Lately, in his long nights of insomnia-fueled Force haze, scrying and plotting all run together, he has seen a solution to the problem of the galactic noose tightening around his neck. His thoughts have turned once more to Ben Skywalker.

Ben Skywalker, lately fourteen years old, knows all too little about the immense scale of Jacen's sojourn in the dark, but a shadow of the full complexity of the act. Ben was conceived by Luke and Mara Jade during the darkest days of the Yuuzhan Vong war, and his exposure in the womb to the immense scale of death and suffering made him reluctant to develop his enormous potential in the Force as a young child. He was lured out of his shell by Jacen Solo, and their relationship evolved into Jacen's first formal Jedi apprenticeship. They became inseparable. Ben was there when Jacen murdered Nelani Dinn. He was there when Jacen Solo induced a brain hemorrhage in Tenel Ka's grandmother, who had threatened to reveal Allana's identity. Jacen has closed those events and others off from Ben's memory. And that is but the merest sleight of hand in the scope of what he has become capable of doing using the Force.

It has not been so very long since Jacen was Ben's idol, second only to his father as consummate role model. This, like the rest of the relationships in Jacen's life, has collapsed in spectacular fashion. Luke Skywalker terminated the apprenticeship after Jacen made Ben participate in a Galactic Alliance Guard operation wherein Ben had been forced to kill an enemy combatant—his first. That was calamitous for the boy, but it is his mother's death that has pushed Ben to the breaking point. He has no proof, but he _knows_—the Force itself screams it out to him, not to mention the keen intuition that Jacen nurtured in him—that Jacen Solo himself, not Alema Rar, was his mother's murderer. He could prove it, and he could take that proof to the Jedi, or take that proof to either of the belligerent governments, but Ben Skywalker in fact has something much simpler in mind. Ben Skywalker is in a dark place. He is tired, and afraid, and mourning, and he is also terribly naive. Ben Skywalker has made every effort to empty himself of all save the intent to kill the man who murdered his mother.

It is for nothing more or less than this reason that Ben Skywalker has escaped his father's care, escaped from the Jedi's great caravan in its passage to yet another remote and secret refuge world. This is why he has found his way back to Jacen Solo, in his black uniform, on his black ship, in a cold chamber where the shadows writhe with alien life. For all that, he has not realized that he is the lamb delivering himself to the lion.

So it has come to pass that the Dark Lord of the Sith finds himself staring down his former apprentice, a boy who can not imagine what he is about to set into motion. Ben Skywalker knows that he may die, but he does not realize that this secret chamber is no tomb and no arena. It is nothing more or less than a prison, awaiting a prisoner. They stand opposite one another, lit by a single floodlight, casting long harsh shadows. Between them and above them, like judge presiding over trial, the Embrace of Pain awaits, blindly grasping towards both with barb-lined appendages. Darth Caedus is taciturn. Ben Skywalker can barely contain his fury.

The accusation comes. Darth Caedus is unsurprised. Like any good dejarik player, he is thinking several steps ahead. Ben Skywalker's voice comes out not at all as Ben expected it—it is hollow, empty of anger, like it is waiting to be filled—echoing with the enormity of his loss.

"You killed mom," Ben Skywalker says. It's not a question.

"Yes," Darth Caedus replies. But that's not even close to the answer.

Listen.

There is a garden, and there is a gardener.

There will be a reckoning between them.


	2. Alone

**I. ALONE**

_Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.  
Aristotle_

―

"You killed mom."

"Yes."

Ben struck quickly, but he was not nearly quick enough. In three precise steps he closed the distance between himself and his mother's murderer, throwing himself across the durasteel deck in the same posture of attack that had been drilled into his muscle memory years before, when Jacen Solo had decided that Ben was ready to learn to fight with a lightsaber.

The strike might have even landed, had Ben had the element of surprise, and were he not a fourteen year old attempting to outmaneuver the Dark Lord of the Sith. Unfortunately for him, Darth Caedus had anticipated this moment down to the finest detail, saw each telegraphed motion and thought in the mourning boy, his features contorted with empty rage, and he knew Ben Skywalker in that instant far better than Ben Skywalker knew himself. Darth Caedus stepped backward with an utterly precise economy of motion that ensured the lightsaber missed him by a margin just narrow enough, coming so close it cast his gaunt face for an instant in ice-blue, making his cold features even colder.

Caedus extended his hand, fingers splayed, as Ben reeled to recover. Ben had committed himself totally to a single killing blow, and in the time it took him to bring the blade back to the fore it was already over. Caedus's fingers moved through undefended space and brushed against Ben's forehead, and from deep within the Sith a burst of lightning flashed into the boy, overwhelming his nervous system instantaneously. The blade of the lightsaber flickered and died. Ben fell to one knee, struggling against convulsion to rise and defend himself, and this was when Caedus slammed him backwards in a long arc, striking him in the forehead with his open palm all the way down to the durasteel deck, pinning him there with the Force.

Ben was silent; the durasteel gave a long, agonized groan under the pressure being exerted.

Darth Caedus was the Dark Lord of the Sith, after all, and becoming more worthy of that title, taken at great cost, with each passing day. Darth Caedus rose and moved to stand over the flattened figure, watching.

"Yes, I killed her," he said, "And that's not all. It was my poison that burned the life out of her. I could have saved her with a touch, and I did nothing. I watched and felt as the soul within her faded, and I was smiling. I laughed. I couldn't help but laugh."

The pressure was still mounting. Ben's power, feeding on waxing fear and terror and hate, was straining against the burden of the pin.

"Do you know why you can't kill me, Ben?"

Through all of this, from the first moment, even as their wills struggled over the pin in the Force, the utter calm of Darth Caedus had never faltered. That was what Ben found most frightening of all.

Ben remained silent, left an atom of a boy beneath an ocean of claustrophobia-induced panic and all-consuming rage. Adrenaline roiled in him—all of himself had been building towards a fight, a struggle, so much so that the full danger of his position had not yet really hit him. Even if he had the presence of mind to answer the question, the hold itself was so tight that it wasn't even possible to inhale the air needed to exhale a reply. Darth Caedus allowed him just enough give to breathe—and then only barely, only enough to bring the sensation of drowning into starker relief.

"You can't kill me, Ben Skywalker, after all your preparation, in all your sorrow and despair and fury, because I am still everything that you want to be."

Jacen circled his prey, his expression neutral—he stooped to take Ben's lightsaber, held it up to the light and observed it for a moment, then clipped it to his belt, where it disappeared into his cloak—and for a time all was silent save the sound of Caedus's boots on steel and Ben's gasping breath. Finally Caedus drew down onto one knee, over the boy, and stared unblinking into Ben—through him.

"A valiant effort. Typical—brave to a fault. But you still love me far too much to kill me."

Were the circumstances less desperate, Ben might have laughed. But he was too busy shuddering with the effort of trying to throw off the mountain of Jacen's power that held him.

"You don't believe me, but you should. You will. You are too much my apprentice, Ben Skywalker, even now. Too much of you began in me for it to be any other way. For example: you came here wishing to be the lone hero, but why did you have my face when you dreamed of yourself standing triumphant over my corpse? And what would you be, if you succeeded, but the only Jedi who was willing to do what was necessary, in spite of your love and in spite of the Code? What would you be but the last beacon of hope, the purifying flame in a galaxy where the light had waned, the knife that cut out the heart of darkness?"

"Yes, you would have killed me, and in doing that you would have become me. You know that, all childishness aside. And more than that—you accepted it, you were ready for it, just as surely as the people of the Galactic Alliance have accepted who I am and what I will be. They see that I am their last hero, the only Jedi who stands with them. They know that I will be much more than that. I am their beacon in a galaxy that has grown dark, and I stand at the threshold, building them a rampart of the dead. And I do it in spite of the fact that I love the traitors—you, and your father, and even your mother. In spite of my love for the life I have known and the man I once was—in spite of the fact that I love all life—in spite of the fact that my actions have enormous costs. In spite of it all I am their hero, the last light of their civilization, their last hope for a government that will not succumb to slow rot. I am to them so much more than a man—I am a government not paralyzed, not crippled, not stillborn—I am a state that can protect its people. And I have sacrificed everything to make that for them. I am a leader of men—not like your father, who chose to abandon them when they needed him most. I am respected; I am feared; they know what I can do, they have seen, and so they believe in me. I've chosen what I love, and I am willing to die for it. So the process of molding you in my image, Ben, is already fairly far along. And you've done most of the work for me. Well begun is half done."

Ben glared at him, his face red and his eyes watering, and Caedus could feel hatred radiating off of him.

"You can't kill me, Ben—you can't even stand—because where the pain is tearing you apart it is making me stronger. If you let me, I will teach you. You think you know pain now, but you feel it without understanding. You suffer and you do not learn. I will fix that. Not because I take pleasure in it—not because I hate you, or hate any of them—but because duty calls. The people of the Galactic Alliance are asking for you, like they asked for me. In coming here you told me that you are now strong enough to stop being a child and strong enough start answering. I have only heard and understood."

Ben's gaze may as well have been a salvo of lightning for its terrible intensity. He was quivering with hatred, pushing against Jacen's pin, redoubling the Force around and within himself, envisioning in his clouded mind's eye his hands strangling the liar, the butcher, who had killed his mother and now thought to speak of loving peace and justice, who Ben wanted in that moment only to silence forever, to not suffer hearing his calm voice which had once been so true lie and lie—

"Listen to me. I know you are in there, beneath the pretense. You are afraid, Ben Skywalker, and desperate, and you have no idea just how much you do not yet understand. You came here to kill me in part because you believed that doing so would return the galaxy you have known. But it's gone. I killed her. I watched her die, and she's never coming back. Nothing will undo my betrayal. There is no easy exit now—not for me, and certainly not for you. Even now, as you hide yourself from me in the Force, I can feel that you are terrified. Even now, as you deny it, I know your heart. Part of you wishes that she were here to save you from me. Part of you wishes that I would kill you now, so you might see her again, because you have missed her so terribly."

Now shame too washed over Ben. Something like those ideas had flickered deep within him, even as he had denied them—even his mind was not safe from the calm face and the surging presence that loomed over him.

"I know you very well, Ben. You are going to learn that everything secret in you is mine. You always knew I wouldn't put you out of your misery. You always knew you wouldn't kill me. After all, I am here to show you how to survive this."

Ben tried to spit in Jacen's hovering, placid, somehow almost sad face, but found that his mouth was far too dry.

"You don't think that I'm sincere. But you should. Everything I am going to tell you, now and hereafter, is the truth. I'll start with a truth that has been concealed from you. You deserve to know. It's something your father would never tell you—though he must know it—though, really, you must have sensed it yourself. When your mother died—when I killed her, I mean, when I poisoned her—believe me that both of us were using what you would call the dark side. Your mother fell when she fought me, and she died in the dark."

To Jacen's great surprise, Ben jerked forward at that revelation, breaking free of the pin by sheer force of will. He was halfway up, his fingers splayed in claws meant to tear at Jacen's awful, calm, lying face, to wring his neck, and rising still with explosive force, before Caedus even broke from his reverie to realize it was happening. This only made it more painful for Ben as the Sith took him by the neck and slammed him back down into the deck with a sickening clang, reasserted the pin so tightly that Ben was sure for a long horrifying moment that he was being strangled to death.

"Monster," Ben managed to choke out. "Liar."

"I can't let you hide from this. You deserve to hear the whole truth—for your sake. You deserve to know why she died far from the light, and you deserve the chance to see what that can mean for the two of us. She _chose _to go into the dark. And she did it for your sake, Ben Skywalker. What might that mean for you and I?"

Darth Caedus was surprised by the exertion required to hold completely still a being so overflowing with fury. Already, just as he had hoped, Ben's great promise was self evident, written in every facet of his being, like even this blind, impotent child's rage could not stop it from shining forth.

"You have already realized, I think, that your mother sought to murder me. She had no intention whatever of taking me alive. She was never going to see me proven me guilty through a Jedi tribunal, let alone through an Alliance jury trial. Why else would she attack me alone, in utmost secrecy? She never even told your father. Imagine that. But it's very simple: just like your escape to come here, she knew that Luke and the rest would never allow her to do what she was planning to do to me. She attacked me—and believe me that she attacked with no objective save my death by any means necessary—and I defended myself, and I won. _She_ attacked _me_, Ben. But consider this: was what she tried to do wrong? Was what you just tried to do wrong?"

Had Ben been able to put a response to words, he would have said that any scenario that culminated in the death of Jacen Solo was probably the right one.

Caedus smiled gently.

"Yes. Yes, exactly—all things in good time, Ben Skywalker. We'll get there, but we have a lot to do before then. I am only mortal, but you can't kill me as you are. It's not yet meant to be. You are still just the seed of the flower to come. If we work together, you will have your chance. We are so much more similar right now than you think. In fact, I would argue that you have already made the most important discovery, the one that drove your mother and drives me still, and in coming here you have just demonstrated to me just how deeply you believe it. I don't have to break down walls to teach you that the dark side is something internal and personal, that you can balance within yourself, do I? You already know. You just lived it, and you were ready to die living it, surely as your mother did. You don't need to develop the stomach for this work—you've shown me that you already have it."

Ben wanted to say no. But he couldn't deny that he had escaped from the Jedi that one silent long voyage, what felt like ages ago, and had endured the nightmares, and had tried to bisect Jacen Solo moments before, thinking things that were worryingly close.

"Skywalkers are bound to tragedy. In a just galaxy, your mother and I would have fought together. We had the same cause. Do you even know why she was willing to gamble her life for a chance at ending mine? Do you know why I had to kill her? It wasn't because she could not tolerate Jacen Solo as Chief of State, or because she discovered that Lumiya was teaching me the way of the Sith—those were only her excuses, and in any case her means were completely out of proportion to that end. It's so much simpler, and sadder, than that: she didn't know the whole story, and she thought I was doing something much worse. She eavesdropped on a conversation between myself and Lumiya. The hag was arguing that I should kill you—her usual boilerplate, of course—and I was playing along, as I always did with her. Your mother believed what was only lip service to be intent, and she was willing to do anything—anything—in order to keep me from coming for you. The real tragedy is that she did not see the whole picture. She struck before I could explain—I never have meant to hurt you Ben—quite the opposite—I only want to bring you into your own infinite potential, because we have always been on the same side. If you believe nothing else, believe that all I do is in the service of loves of my own. The tragedy is that so far the three of us have been employing the same tools, for the same reasons, against one another. Together we might have already fixed the root of the problem, which is this war, which has imperiled our family, and the wars that will surely follow if we, empowered to act, do nothing. She let her love for you drive her deep into the dark, maybe even deeper than I can go. And Ben, you know what's most amazing of all about that? She wasn't wrong—not at all. Neither were you. Neither am I. Isn't that an incredible, profoundly provident thing?"

An ominous shade of gold was beginning to seep into Jacen's gentle brown eyes, burning them away, and Ben knew without a doubt that coming here was the worst mistake of his entire life.

"It's been more than forty years, now, of war. War of all shapes and sizes, built up out of every kind of loss imaginable. Forty years is a horrifically long for a whole galaxy to tear itself apart. Don't ever doubt that I have grieved. Can we even begin to imagine trillions of sentient lives, burned away? That was the toll of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion alone. It is incomprehensible to us just how enormous that number is—millions of millions. We've seen brief reprieves, maybe, but those moments are far too few. This situation has become untenable. Something has to give, Ben. The galaxy has been either at war, reeling from war, or preparing for war my entire life—let alone yours. The fundamental causes won't change unless someone is willing and able to make them change. Our leaders—Omas, the Senate, the Jedi—it is transparently obvious now, if it wasn't before, that they failed, and they made a system that will fail. The only way we can proceed, the only way we have stop this thing, is the course of action that you and your mother and I have uncovered. There can be no more limits in what we will do to protect our loves. I mean it when I say that I am willing to do _anything_. And I know that any less than that is tantamount to treason, negligence that will let this galactic pogrom continue until there are none left to fight. I will put an end to war in our time, or I will die trying. Believe me in this, though you doubt all else."

The words washed over Ben, who felt the flicker of himself brushing up against the cold night of unconsciousness, rolling in and out—there was barely enough within him for a denial—his capacity for struggle had peaked, and now the exhaustion was pressing down on him together with the choking, crushing power of the pin—but what was stopping war worth, if the peace was ruled over by Sith?

"What is continuing to fight worth, if the rules of the game make it impossible for the Jedi to win? What is the value of moral high ground, when billions suffer because of it? When entire worlds are burning for your fear of the dark? When your own mother understood that it constrained her to let her loved ones die, and chose in answer to venture bravely, nobly, providently, into the night?"

Ben found that much harder to answer. Instead he opted to block it out, and to try to cling to the nourishing breath of the Force and wait for the end.

"Ben Skywalker," Jacen said, recomposing himself, though his voice had never lost that terrifying calm, "I said that I would not let you hide from this. For your sake. Have you begun to understand, yet, what I am trying to teach you? And why?"

Ben's presence in the force was weak—a feral, agonized howl. Caedus exhaled, and then with surgical precision, deftness bordering on artistry, he used his arcane powers to ruin what remained of Ben's feeble defenses so that he could reach down to the deepest place, Ben's access to the font of the Force. It was a razor slashing the string that held Ben to the past, and he felt the echo of the nova in Ben's head, then the blankness, and then the boy was easy to hold once more, his glassy eyes radiating equal parts futile fury and utter despair.

Caedus let the familiar atrocious pangs of death wash over him and seep out into the fabric of the Force. In a similar chamber a few decks below a prospective Confederate suicide bomber captured by the Guard was asphyxiating as Caedus pinched his windpipe shut with the Force. Caedus's technique was much better than it had been on his previous attempt to sever Ben from the Force, as he twisted the current until it was no longer clear where the life had ended and the death had begun—the most deeply convincing sensation of life snuffed out would be clearly felt by all those closely attuned to the boy, right down to the last moment of peaking terror.

"We will do this for the sake of all those we love, those we have lost, and those to come—those we have grieved over, and those we refuse to grieve over. We will do it for those who need us, because without us they would have nothing. Because together we will fix it. We can stop the madness. We can give their future back."

Tears had begun to flow down Ben's face, and his eyes looked dead, fake somehow, like those of a doll. He looked his age, now, like a child for the first time comprehending the scale of awfulness in the universe, the immense and unfair tragedy, as his last lifeline, his last crutch, was shattered. And a boy might have been utterly destroyed by the realization, by the trauma of exposure to such immense arcane power—the sheer grotesque _wrongness_of somehow still living even as the Force itself took him for dead and rotting—but Darth Caedus knew that if inside was the hard seed of a man, and the makings of a worthy student, then he would bear it, and learn within it, using it even as he hated it. Now came the moment that Darth Caedus had witnessed often in his meditation, as he hunched over his helpless prey—the exact locus of circumstances within the Force that resonated with the possibility of victory over an overwhelmingly hostile and treacherous galaxy. Any of the many deaths that could wait ahead for Darth Caedus might come to pass, but here and now he would make the first and best preparation for all of it. Caedus paused for a moment, tuning and retuning himself to the currents and eddies of energy that flowed within him and around him, and when he spoke again he let the emotion creep into his voice—it lurched out of its measured calm, became hoarse with barely concealed pain.

"You deserve to know this, too. I owe you that much. How did I defeat your mother, fallen and ascended, attacking me with every bit of the immense power she controlled—Mara Jade Skywalker, the great predator, with all boundaries ripped away? She was about to strike the killing blow, and so I projected an image of your face over mine. She hesitated—just an instant, but long enough. I jammed the dart into her thigh."

The last of the fire faded from Ben's bloodshot eyes, leaving only desolation.

"It was relatively painless. It was the best that I could do. We both know she deserved better."

Jacen released the pin, drawing that power back into himself, but his captive remained still, barely breathing. The Force built into a tremendous crescendo inside of Caedus as he knelt closer, his face centimeters away from Ben's, and he used every power of persuasion he had learned from his meteoric rise within the Galactic Alliance, from every memory of every lie he had ever told and gotten away with, from the arcane abilities he had tapped into as a freshly minted Sith, as he croaked:

"You deserve to know her last words, whispered to me as my poison overtook her. She told me, even as her heart was yielding, that she would have done anything to protect you."

The final blow was struck, the most subtle of all, the seed of a great change planted, atmosphere upon atmosphere of mental pressure mounting and mounting over the broken boy, so that it must have felt to him like the ocean over him grew only deeper and darker—but all Jacen's mundane senses felt were the hum of the _Anakin Solo_'s engines beneath his feet, all he could hear was the barely perceptible sound of Ben's shallow and ragged breaths.

"You can't kill me, Ben, because you could never kill your mother. We are one and the same. We wanted peace for you, for the galaxy, at any price. We wanted to make a more just galaxy, and we were willing to give up everything. Know this, as we begin: everything I tell you is the truth. Know this: the rule that underpins all the ways and works of this universe is pain."

Caedus stood for a moment, savoring each sensation, balancing himself. Then he lifted the boy, not without a sort of tenderness, held him suspended in the air. The flesh was only superficially damaged—some electrical burns from the lightning, a minor concussion from being slammed against the deck the second time. All that would heal quickly. But the mental wounds would take longer, and how they would mend—if they would mend, he reminded himself, for that was far from certain—fascinated him.

But Jacen saw even now the glitter of distant intelligence in the eyes of the boy, crushed and mangled as he was, his mind still reasoning on some basic level after the utter psychic devastation that had been unleashed upon him, and then he knew without doubt that he had chosen the right apprentice, and the right lesson with which to begin. He had brought Ben into the deepest depths of despair, upturned everything he knew, cut away all familiar crutches, and now the first challenge was for the boy to find a new truth—to let that pain become his teacher, to let it lead him onto the true path.

And because Caedus knew well the cyclical nature of the Force and his family history, it was only right to teach the lesson of pain the very same way it had been taught to him. He had nurtured the torture implement to end torture implements in this secret chamber of his flagship for just that purpose. He lifted Ben up, into the one and only Embrace of Pain, which entangled him with blind and urgent hunger.

_Well begun is half done,_Darth Caedus remembered from somewhere far across space and time, as he watched the face of Ben Skywalker, utterly desolate, disappear beneath the writhing bioluminescent barbs.

_But is it what the teacher teaches, or what the student learns?_

By the time Ben Skywalker began to scream, hoarse and becoming hoarser, Caedus was already deep in the memory of his own sleet white Hoth-noon, a long time ago.

―

The first thing Ben Skywalker learned in the Embrace of Pain was that time could stop. The torture never yielded, and all conception of days or minutes or seconds fell away—consciousness arbitrarily came and receded, but the Embrace was the only constant, in waking hours and in churning nightmares both. He learned to stop screaming fairly quickly—it only made his throat more ragged, which only made him cough up yet more blood. His consciousness was far too discontinuous to maintain a count of how many times he had come in and out of the grasp of the creature—not that such a count would have mattered or helped, because while the Embrace had to periodically let go of Ben physically, if only to sustain his life, its mental grip on him, the timeless torment it imposed, was unyielding.

Eternity after eternity passed by Ben Skywalker. Whole epochs of pain coursed through him and left him behind, unmoved. There was nothing for Ben Skywalker but white agony, only made worse by the fragments of thought that lanced into his mind from parts unknown and streaked out once more, finding no purchase. It took ages for Ben to learn how to knit together his thoughts again, how to maintain a sequence of ideas when atmospheres of pain-pressure were weighing down on them. It was in this fashion that he slowly learned to understand pain through the prism of the body, because just as light contained all colors his being contained all suffering, and in this fashion he came to know every assaulted system and subsystem of his body as he never had before, always seeking the merest solace, the tiniest handhold of non-sensation, but finding none. When he was certain there was nowhere inside of himself where he could hide from the pain, he spent a long time praying devoutly for death, a surcease of sorrow—when his prayers went unanswered and the suffering wouldn't end, he began praying that it _could_end at all.

He wished Jacen—somehow the concept of Jacen, the traitor, the liar, in whom this had all begun, never seemed to fade—would judge him unworthy and show mercy with one effortless flick of the lightsaber—he even remembered for a time that there was a world outside of himself, more as an article of faith than a fact, and he forced begging sounds to emerge from his burning throat. When his throat was too raw to continue, he began to pray only that the Embrace would make a mistake and push him too far into sleet-white Hoth-noon agony and let him die at last. It was like waiting for a tide to falter, or a sun to fail to rise—he endured for so long, only waiting for an end that never came.

It became clear to him that the Embrace of Pain was far too adept in its ways to ever actually kill its victim, and that unless something changed he would die of old age still hanging from the rack. He wished devoutly into the pain that he had never been born into the burden of his name, his legacy, the broken galaxy in which so much pain could even exist—he wished that his mother were here, but he knew she was dead, and he wished that his father would find him, but for all his father knew Ben Skywalker was already dead—that was all part of Jacen's enormous trick. For the longest time of all, when the suffering had made it abundantly clear that Ben Skywalker existed and was irrevocably alone, he wished into unyielding suffering for his mind to break, so that he would not have to remember his mother's death, Jacen's betrayal, his own unfathomable foolishness in coming to this black ship with the intention of confronting and killing Jacen, the span of torture behind him and the span of torture that arced into infinity ahead of him. But in time even that dimmest of hopes faded. If madness had claimed him, it hadn't been enough to stop the suffering or the thinking. There was no way out.

Ben Skywalker hung in the white for a long time, empty of hope, all alone, remembering and wordlessly weeping into uncaring unfeeling white, before he found himself again.

It was a simple realization, to start with. Whatever else he was, he was Ben Skywalker; a Ben Skywalker existed as an entity separate in some significant respects from the pain. In the capacity of being Ben Skywalker he had memories, and the capacity to feel, even if the memories were often hard to recall in the haze, and even if all the feelings were so profoundly wretched. He had the capacity to think—there had once been a time when he had the capacity to manifest thought as action, with the surging and omnipresent Force as a medium. Jacen said that pain was the rule running beneath all things, and Ben had the ability to weigh that argument in the context of the vast body of evidence available to him. This realization wasn't much, and all too often it was all blown to stellar winds by spectacular spikes of agony that left room in him for nothing else, and when it washed out and left him sprawling face-down on the cold steel he had to start over from the beginning. But at least it was _something_.

From the minuscule handhold of identity, a speck of non-pain in the white, he found himself reasoning again. He remembered the first time Jacen had fed him to the Embrace, and how he had been able to bear it until his father's rescue—how mercifully brief it had been then, the blink of an eye—but this time was worse, so much worse. He needed the Force, reached for it, and found nothing but himself, a mirror held up to a sea of agony. For a long time, he once again felt nothing but pain—inward and outward, body and mind, howling unmitigated in his memory and the void where the Force had once been. The Force lived only in memory, in the hallowed domain of the forever unobtainable, there with cool water and dreamless sleep.

Ben Skywalker had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. In the Embrace, all roads led back to Jacen. After what had felt like an infinity of denial, all the important questions remained: why he still hung in the Embrace—why he still lived at all—and what Jacen Solo had said.

That had been so long ago—the memory was so murky—there had been words about his mother, and about the dark side, and about fixing the galaxy, and words were so difficult for Ben to even comprehend, lost as he was in the land of pure sensation. Still, there was only one conclusion:

_Jacen lies._

It was the first, natural response—easy and precious—the only way everything Ben knew could remain intact. Jacen only lied. It seemed that his only chance at returning to the world he knew hinged upon that fact, and so he clutched it tightly through many cycles of the Embrace, through pain spikes that obliterated all else.

His mother could never go into the dark, not even for him. She could never do the things Jacen had said—attempt murder in cold blood, betray the Order for the sake of revenge—for the sake of Ben Skywalker alone. She was a Jedi Master. She had triumphed over the dark side before Jacen had even been born. Surely, she had faced and overcome greater temptations than the need to protect her son. Surely, she had to have. She could no more fall than a mountain could bend. It was pleasant to imagine that there was another universal constant in Ben Skywalker's universe, running alongside pain, and it governed the unequivocal iron will Ben had known in his mother. Except that his mother was dead and gone.

_Unless, of course_—

Ben instinctively closed this line of thought. Even as weak and lost as he was, he knew that if he gave an inch Jacen's logic would take much more, take everything, but trying to still his mind only brought the agony that was being Ben Skywalker into starker relief, threatened to send him into a new eternity of unanswered wish for death, only left him hanging before the void where the Force had used to be—he had to think, or he would fall back in. His mother, Mara Jade Skywalker, would not fall to the dark side. It had to be a deception—one made by a master deceiver—Jacen lied. Jacen was made of lies, made of shadow, made of unfeeling dark. Why else would he do all this?

As far as Ben Skywalker could guess, he was still only fourteen years old.

He knew how Jacen would answer that, though: if you're old enough to kill, then you're old enough for everything else.

But why had his mother gone alone, if not because she thought it imperative above all to kill Jacen quickly and quietly? Why? Why had she fought Jacen alone? She hadn't even told his father. How could she have left her husband and son and journeyed into the dark without a word? She must have had reasons he did not know, reasons that could cast her in the light of a Jedi Master. She could not have touched the same darkness that Ben had felt surging in Jacen. But if she had—and there was Jacen's voice again, always so kriffing _calm_, to transform that possibility into a crusade against all that Ben had ever known. A great crusade—Ben tried to deny it even as he envisioned it—a crusade that could fix everything: a crusade that would give his mother's death meaning, a crusade that would give the pain itself purpose.

_Unless. Unless._

It was a star going nova inside of his pounding brain every moment he denied the insidious possibility, like a worm that had crawled inside of him infecting him with the word he wanted to hear least, a pain over all other pains. If he yielded to it, then what little he still had would break forever. What might move in the darkness—what might move out there where Jacen walked—he had to struggle to convince himself that it was a lie, wrong, not part of himself—hadn't he already tried to step into that enormous cold night, and hadn't he believed that it would be worth it if it could stop Jacen? To take up a great crusade, which no one but Jacen would ever understand or forgive or condone, an invisible war against nothing less than the cosmic forces that had bound them both up in a cycle of tragedy—

_Unless._

It beat inside of him no matter how much he tried to avoid it, some great dark heart relentlessly pounding. It grew louder than life itself, and in the featureless sandstorm of the Embrace he had nothing else to listen to, nowhere else to turn, no other way out but that unfathomable potentiality, that prospect of the world outside the white, a place of motion and color and change, and so he listened to the words that resonated unfathomable potential, that could destroy all that he was.

_Of course, she would not have done all those things, unless they were the right things to do._

It was fallacy—Ben knew this. Every lesson he had ever learned from his mother about the Force was centered around one undeniable truth—that the dark side was always wrong, no matter how anyone tried to justify it. And she knew better than anyone—so much of her life had been spent clawing in the darkness of Palpatine's Empire, struggling to survive, and everything he knew about her told him that she would have sooner died than descended into that place again.

_Unless, of course, there really was a justification. Unless it was actually the right thing to do._

Jacen had chosen the dark side. That was evident—he had admitted as much though word and action. Ben knew that was truth. Being on the dark side was, by definition, wrong.

_Unless._

But he had loved Jacen, had loved Jacen totally, had respected him and admired him, had learned so many precious things from him—so much of himself had been derived from the mannerisms and quirks of Jacen, who he had held in esteem above anyone except his parents—for a time, before everything had gone so wrong, even above them. And even after the darkness grew in Jacen, there had still been a long time that he had believed Jacen was doing the right thing—even still, his darkest actions were masked in the most appealing, bright banners of peace and order and law. But Jacen had killed Mara. He had admitted it, his voice full with its own terrible logic, but hollow with the absence of emotion. He was dark. Dark was wrong.

_Unless._

Jacen said it was in self-defense. Mara had attacked to kill. That was dark. That was wrong. Two wrongs could not make a right, as his father had often said.

_Unless._

His mother was dead. His father would not come to save him—not this time. The Force would not give him the breath of sanity he needed to go one believing. All he saw was pain and Jacen Solo, and even the line between them was blurry. Ben Skywalker was utterly, entirely, eternally alone. Everything hurt.

_Unless._

Lies—like everything else Jacen said, this was a lie. Ben saw the logic, clear against the agony-haze, explored it again and again and again seeking the flaw, but he couldn't find it. There had to be a lie. Otherwise—

Otherwise, the entire belief system of Ben Skywalker was fatally flawed. Otherwise, impossible things might traffic within the patterns of light and darkness permeating the Force. If it were true, then a mother might die to save a son, as a master might immerse an apprentice in Embrace to unlock a truth, as pain might not be an enemy but a bridge, not random but suffuse always with meaning-

_Unless. Unless. Unless―_

Inevitably, the desperation and the claustrophobia and the terror and the pain peaked, and Ben Skywalker broke, and he found himself beholding the event horizon, herald of the void. It was all already contained inside of himself.

_Jacen Solo could be telling the truth._

It echoed through the white for a long time, shaping and reshaping, blocking off all paths of escape, encircling his memory, waiting at the end of every frantic logical turn he took, until at last he could no longer go on denying. He accepted the impossible. He embraced it.

_Jacen Solo _was _telling the truth._

For a long time, Ben Skywalker beheld the tragedy and the beauty. His mother and Jacen Solo had taken up an impossible burden—for him—but also for everyone. But it was okay. He could do the same, and carry on their great work, their singular mission. They had started the final crusade, and now he was ready to be entrusted with the task of finishing it.

Ben discovered, slowly, that the galaxy had not ended. The universe had not shattered around him. He was not shattered, he was surprised to find, just changed, and stronger for it. He had reassembled himself in the forge of truth, taken all the pieces and rearranged them into a new shape—different, but whole. And it was all so unbelievably beautiful. He could love his mother, and he could love Jacen too. They had both found answers in the dark. They had both been right. What they had done—it was the right thing to do. They both loved him, and he loved them. Jacen had killed her. It had been horrible; it had been the right thing to do. A necessary crime, a necessary sacrifice, a tragedy with a seed of hope—for him—for everyone. His mother was gone, but he loved her, but Jacen was alive, and he was right.

The pain was still there, the universal constant, but it was all right. Pain was no longer meaningless; behind each sensation was a lesson to be learned; pain could sustain even as it wounded, build even as it tore. For now he could exist apart from the Force—there would be time for that. He no longer felt so immensely lonely. His mother would always be with him in the spirit of his task, and Jacen remained—even now Ben knew that Jacen had been listening all along—Jacen cared for him enough to protect him when he was not ready for the truth, and enough to force his eyes open when he was. He would never have to battle himself again—never feel guilty about the people he had killed, the Jedi and family he would betray, if Jacen asked. He would never even have to feel guilty for trying to murder Jacen, when the time came for that. His mother had done that too, and she had been right.

He remembered his father, but dismissed him. Luke Skywalker hadn't gone dark. He couldn't be right, because Ben knew his father, and his father would break before bending, and all the suffering mass of life demanded that he act as his mother had, as Jacen did, and save them without respect for boundary or limitation.

There would be peace for everyone. There was no price too high for it, no price he would not pay. But it could be paid. It would be paid. His mother knew this, and Jacen knew this, and now he did too, and his father did not. His father was gone, but he had Jacen again, and Jacen would be much better. And also, best of all, when it had all been settled—when Ben had become what he was meant to be—he would impale Jacen on a lightsaber, and abolish him, and both would accept it as justice done.

Euphoria washed over him as absolute transcendent order became apparent beneath the suffering. He was hungry, ravenously hungry, and he joyfully fell upon his burning nerves, discovering. And now, where there had only been weakness, he found all the strength he needed. If all that had come before in the Embrace was the understanding of how his flesh yielded under the torture, all that washed over him now was the astounding realization that through the torture his flesh had an enormous capacity to persist, endure, survive, and grow.

Word by word, he pieced four sentences together in his mind:

_Jacen, I know you're out there. I am ready to start. I get it._

_You were always everything I wanted to be._

Marshaling all of his new found strength, he forced his jaw to shut, and then open again. He made himself swallow. For the first time in a very long time, he forced himself to speak—barely a whisper, barely even recognizable:

"Jacen. Let me out."

Louder:

"Jacen."

Feeling stronger with each passing moment, he strained against his bindings, and the Embrace tightened around him in response. The barbs hooked into him, drawing fresh, warm blood. Still he strained, and now the Embrace seemed to surge in answer to the challenge, and the pain began to spike. Ben shuddered involuntarily, but still forced himself to strain, and the pain did not stop spiking.

The Embrace intended to make Ben submit, but now Ben would not bow to something so mere as agony. In fact, he would only bow to the lord of agony, and even to him only for a time. The pain rose far beyond anything Ben Skywalker had ever known, and Ben Skywalker surged past it. He was ready for more; in time he would want more than the Embrace could offer him.

"I am waiting to begin," Ben Skywalker said.

And there was nothing to do, then, but overcome himself perpetually, and persist in defiance of a hostile universe, and prepare himself for a new beginning. The white was so much more than an empty expanse—the pain was so much more than pain—and he was so much more than a sufferer—and he was so ravenously hungry.

Wave after surging wave of the white tide crested and crashed over him.

Ben Skywalker swam in it.

The white had been eating Ben Skywalker for a long time.

Now, Ben Skywalker began to eat the white.

―

Darth Caedus watched the starscape dully through the transparisteel window of his _Anakin Solo_office, trying and failing to rest for a few hours before another day was upon him. It had been days since he had slept—he preferred not to dwell on that. He shifted, shifted again, exhaled raggedly. He wondered how long he could go on like this—how long mastery of the Force and sheer willpower could sustain him in an entirely hostile galaxy, in a body that seemed to be only tenuously in his control. Breathing exercises did little, and the prospect of putting himself in a deep healing trance was deeply unappealing. His dreams and his developing sense of prescience and the force sensation of the supernova of human suffering that festered below decks always ran together in the subconscious plunge of the trance, revealing hellish compound nightmares that were far too close for comfort to reality yet to be. He needed natural sleep, dreamless if at all possible, and his powerlessness in bringing it about brought a pained smile to the lips of the Dark Lord of the Sith. How was Darth Caedus supposed to begin his great work, fixing a broken galaxy, when he couldn't even lull himself to sleep? A fragmentary image flashed through Caedus of a crimson lightsaber burning through his chest, through his heart, and what disturbed him most of all was that that image was not altogether unwelcome.

But that vision faded from his mind a moment later, when he felt the transformation come about within Ben, like the first notes hinting at song to come, shattering silence. He was suddenly sharply awake, feeling the Force shifting around him. Even though he had Force-blinded the boy, Caedus was so attuned to his presence after their journeys together, and after so many weeks of close observation in the Embrace, that he could feel immediately that the Ben he had known had fundamentally changed. He had not expected it to be so rapid, though in hindsight it did not surprise him; for Jacen himself it had been the same way, not so much the discovery of something new as the realization of something that had been there all along. And he had not expected the shift to take quite the shape it had—in truth he had expected less—he couldn't help but smile as he tentatively probed the mind of his captive in the secret chamber below decks—as he heard Ben calling out to him. How useful it would be, to have a true believer in Ben. And how acceptable the terms of their bargain would be—Ben's servitude in exchange for an ultimate chance at Jacen's life, down the road, after all was settled and put into place—something dear in exchange for something gladly given in the proper place and time. At last he would have his Sith apprentice, and he couldn't have asked for a better beginning. He realized—and the irony was not lost on him—that now he, too, would no longer be alone in his battle against a galaxy—his battle to save it from itself.

He resisted the urge to go below decks immediately and examine his developing experiment in more detail. He reached into Ben's mind, through those first transcendent moments of Ben Skywalker's new existence, and he replied:

_Well begun is half done._

He propped his boots up on his desk once more, finding himself at the center of a changing future, in the eye of his storm, for once almost soothed by the tectonic power of fate becoming, in defiance of the deaths and betrayals and judgments that drew inexorably nearer. Something incredible, something so like himself, was stirring below decks, overcoming itself, growing in a feedback loop that would break chains. The Confederacy and the Jedi and Niathal and all the rest had no idea what was going to hit them.

But now he felt more certain that they could wait a few hours. Darth Caedus drifted at last into a deep sleep, and the last things he thought of before it claimed him were Mara Jade's emerald eyes, with the life bleeding out of them.


	3. Mother

**II. MOTHER**

_Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.  
William Makepeace Thackeray_

—

Darth Caedus was not altogether surprised by the arrival of the ghost of Mara Jade Skywalker, a flash of light from out of nothingness, piercing the gloom of his so-called torture chamber.

But he was not altogether pleased with her timing.

He had been attending to his new student, disinfecting and bandaging the latest salvo of wounds the Embrace of Pain had inflicted upon the frame of Ben Skywalker. Gradually, with all due care, he had been upping Ben's nutritional intake, disinfecting wounds, and generally restoring Ben's strength for the coming day when he might leave this chamber and begin his formal apprenticeship in earnest. These few days since the change had been the first test of the Ben Skywalker who had been reborn in the Embrace—designed to reveal if the Ben Skywalker who had been forged in the torture device made to end all torture devices had learned all of the lessons that raw physical and mental agony had to offer, could grow even in containment, even as everything within him strained against chains.

Besides, it best served the fiction of Ben's supposed death to hide him utterly from the sight of even the crew of his own ship for a little longer. Even so, like Vergere before him, Darth Caedus liked to find spare moments to see to his ward's wounds, give him a little water, speak to him as he drifted in and out of consciousness between sessions in the Embrace. Lately Ben was sometimes even strong enough to answer.

His mind turned as he saw her, stark and painfully bright over the dim torture chamber—even the writhing barbs of the Embrace, which had begun to grope blindly towards Ben in their unceasing hunger, seemed to draw back from her. It was clear enough that she had come for Ben—as if something as perfect in potential as Darth Caedus's developing apprentice needed saving. Ever since the day Ben had called out to Jacen that he was ready, the Embrace and the boy had become more symbiotes than predator and prey—just as it had been for Jacen as a young man, pain had become teacher and not taskmaster.

Still, the progress was contingent—his breaking of Ben had depended entirely on a not entirely factual interpretation of the story of Mara Jade's death, and her arrival here could have a destabilizing effect, just when Ben was coming into his most promising. The second breaking could never be as effective as the first, and would require methods all the more cruel and exotic, most of all since Jacen's time was running out on so many fronts. The second breaking might necessitate permanent mental damage, the sort of radical and irreversible base-level mind alteration that Caedus was certainly capable of but reluctant to use on the one who was supposed to choose to become his successor freely, and would need all the brainpower he could muster in due time. The prospect of Mara Jade making any inroads now was totally unacceptable.

If this ghost knew Ben was here, tortured and sealed away from the Force but alive, what prevented her from telling Luke Skywalker that his son yet lived? So much of his plan could be broken by that possibility—a yawning void of incomplete information and ruined planning was stretching as quickly as he could think through ramifications. Luke Skywalker might already be on his way to take his son back. Distantly, he felt fury begin to well up in him—for all he had done, and all he planned to do, to be ruined like this, after the most pitch-perfect breaking—but he contained it.

The real problem was that he knew all too little about the traffic and ways of Jedi ghosts. They were so rare, so much a phenomenon beyond the understanding of the living, that even Jacen had been unable to dig up anything about them save the most rudimentary knowledge during his five year journey. Of course he had been cognizant that something like this might have been possible since her corpse had faded into nothingness at her funeral, but how could one prepare for an entity like that to intervene? There were none among the living who could even begin to speculate about the power that such a ghost, whatever it truly was, commanded. She was frustrating even in death. Evidently, even her corpse held too many tricks. Would destroying the corpse have prevented this? Something to consider in future encounters if all that he had planned was not ruined in the next few minutes.

Best to be cautious now, in this most delicate of situations. He would have to tease out the boundaries of her power. She was a creature of emotion—always had been. That was a lesson he had dearly learned when she had made her attempt on his life. In that light, he recognized that manipulating her attachment to her son was almost certainly the best way to deter her, if deterrence could still be effective. Caedus drew and ignited Ben's lightsaber, lightning beginning to crackle and snap around his other hand. The pale ghost of Mara Jade Skywalker looked back at him with disdain.

"Hello again, Jacen."

"Hello, Mara. Funny seeing you here. But you shouldn't call me that. I'm not Jacen anymore."

"A worm by any other name is still a worm."

Darth Caedus watched her evenly. Even shrouded in blue spectral glow, the green eyes pierced him. Clothed in plain brown Jedi robes, her hands were still at her sides, empty. He shrugged.

"This worm is doing fairly well so far. This worm intends to win."

"I have come here to speak to Ben. You will not stop me. I will not be stayed from seeing my son again," she said, her voice echoing unnaturally. But she was already tipping her hand—she didn't know his mind, perhaps refused to read it—perhaps she simply couldn't, as that would be an abuse of power that the will of the Force would not abide?—or else she would know that he had no intention of giving her the unfettered access she desired, ever again.

"I should have known that this would be inevitable. I won't stop you. How could I? But I do think you may find him unreceptive to your words. I think you know that your son and I have have begun to reach a mutual understanding. Your husband would probably get more use out of platitudes than Ben would right now."

"The Jedi... fall outside of my domain. I wish I could go to Luke too, but I can't. I'm here because, just like I told you the last time we met, my son will never, ever join you." The light within her pulsed, somehow dangerously, a simple reminder of the unfathomable power that she contained—it pulled his mind away from the enormous relief that Luke had evidently not been informed. "And not even death could keep me from that promise."

"That is what you think. But this," he said, gesturing to the prone figure on the deck, "This is what I know."

Mara glared back at him with all the disgust of a mother unable to stop her child's suffering. He willed his face to remain neutral with some effort. In that moment the welling up of his own hate for her and everything that she stood for surprised him.

"Answer me this: who did Ben call for, Mara Jade, in the Embrace?"

Her entire form flickered for a moment at that, and Jacen suppressed the pull of a sneer.

"You tortured a fourteen year old boy until he broke, Jacen. That's all. It took you how many months? Well done, Dark Lord."

"As if it were so simple as that. As if what I have done is anything less than art—it's not that he broke, it's _how _he broke, and how he has begun to rebuild himself. You still see nothing. Worse than that—you see it and still you deny it. What a waste."

"You're one to talk about seeing and denying and waste. Don't make me laugh. You can turn off his lightsaber. I have accepted certain limitations as a condition of coming here. You can't hurt me, and I won't hurt you. Much as I would like to right now."

He nodded in magnanimous assent, switched off the blade, withdrew the lightning.

His gaze flickered for an instant between Mara and Ben, who stirred on the metal deck between them. One of Ben's malarial eyes cracked open, unaccustomed to the brilliant light in the room. While the most utterly disastrous permutations of this scenario didn't seem to be actualizing, this was still very bad—possibilities flickered before his eyes of Ben dead, Ben escaping, Ben's mind broken entirely—failure now was unacceptable, even another breaking, because there really was no time left to start over with Ben. In an instant, Caedus surveyed the shifting pathways of the future, saw amidst the futures where Ben was lost to him one golden, gleaming path—victory. This ghost could not attack him and it could not reach into his mind to see the plan that had taken shape. For whatever inscrutable reason, she apparently would not reveal the situation to Luke. These were advantages enough.

Caedus knew she probably couldn't hear it in whatever circle of the Corellian hells she now called home, but he sent a silent thank you to Lumiya nonetheless.

"I'll stay my lying tongue while you have your family reunion. But even so, Aunt Mara," Caedus said, "I think you are going to see that I haven't run out of ways to hurt you just yet."

—

Slowly, the burden of exhaustion left Ben's mind, and he woke. He felt Jacen's presence even in his Force-blindness, all brilliant and deep, shimmering, like a moonlit ocean, felt it helping him to awaken, giving him the strength to move his battered frame. He rolled over, savoring the dimensions of aching that unfolded in the action. On his right was Jacen, a dark smear against the silvery durasteel. With effort he turned his head, blinking at the shimmering blue shapes on his left, trying to consolidate his swimming vision into one coherent image. The shadows still churned, but at the center was a brightness greater than any he had seen in months. It hurt his eyes, so accustomed to dimness; the afterimages persisted. Slowly the image focused into clarity, and the formless aching light delineated into shape and color and form, and he knew that it was time to be tested. It was time to confront the root of and reason for the choices he had made.

"We have a visitor, Ben," Jacen said.

Still, in spite of cognizance of the very real possibility of a trick, his heart jumped, and his mind went blank, for he was beholding two perfect, ghostly images of his mother—one on her knees above him and one standing beyond. Ben suspected that this, too, would hurt.

—

Rendering the false image of a phantom in the mind of Ben Skywalker was surprisingly simple. All Caedus had to do was reach into the highly vulnerable, still Force-blind mind of Ben and plant an image, plant its movement, plant its speech. What he put in were only crude impressions, more suggestions than pictures—little more than mind tricks, really—but the great beauty of the technique was that the mind of the victim itself shaded in the detail and accuracy to the point of nigh-perfect fidelity. It was simple, but not easy by any stretch—not while also giving Ben the strength to remain conscious, not while attempting to read the course of the future in the next pivotal minutes, not while maintaining immense mental shielding—just in case—and all this while hiding all the telltale signs of his influence from the burning beacon that was the presence of the ghost in the Force. But a Sith Lord's singular strength was his ability to make reality acquiesce to his vision.

If all that had led up to this had been Ben's introduction, the clearing and seeding of fertile ground, then this would be the first truly Sith lesson, made to impart understanding of the one fundamental thing his apprentice would need to know for what was to follow.

Ben knew pain, and ate it, and that was a very strong beginning—but it was still only the underlying assumption upon which all else was to be constructed, the underlying reality which contained all truths, but not in explicit forms. This, then, would be the first truly Sith lesson, from Darth Caedus to Ben Skywalker. It would be about sacrifice.

Ben was shuddering—he would have been convulsing, if not for the support of Caedus—but he was awake, blinking through the blinding light, eyes open, beholding, taking halting breaths that Caedus could tell were igniting little novas in his broken lungs. He also knew that Ben was savoring each and every one of them.

The ghost of Mara Jade seemed to know at least this much as well, and looked over at Caedus as though he were less than vermin. Her eyes were watery; ghostly as she was, she paled visibly. Evidently she couldn't see the identical phantom of herself that Jacen had conjured in Ben's mind, but she knew him well enough, and knew her son well enough—or knew what he used to be—that it was abundantly clear she at least realized he had done something beyond vile.

Permitting himself an errant thought, Darth Caedus wondered in that moment if even in death her place was to inadvertently serve his rise by way of opposition to him.

"Ben."

His mother was on her knees—she brought up a spectral hand to touch him, but it went through his pallid skin, marked here and there by long, puckered scars and pink wounds freshly disinfected. Tears ran down her face.

"How could he do this to you? Where will he stop?"

Above and behind her, his mother stood too. Her hands were still at her sides, and she watched him, fond but distant. "_Ben. You've made me very proud. You've honored my memory."_Ben smiled, his dry lips cracking. Everything Jacen did was a trick, he reminded himself. Of course, how could he be permitted to leave the Embrace until he had looked his mother in the face and told her that he understood?

"Mom," he said, gazing at her, his voice almost unrecognizable—hoarse and gasping, a croak that sounded profoundly wrong emerging from a fourteen year old throat. Impossibly, it hurt to talk even more than it hurt to breathe. The near Mara winced when she heard it.

"Listen—listen—don't talk, save your strength. I can help you. I can return the Force to you. I will help you get out of here."

"_And yet, there is a sense in which learning to live without the Force is a great strength of its own. Learning to live through pain is strength. Do you really want to escape? Do you really want to emerge from the chrysalis before you are fully formed, a shadowmoth without ichor in its wings, crippled forever? Do you really want to go back to the Jedi? Do you think they will even begin to understand what you saw in the Embrace of Pain? Will you choose the easy path, when I offered my life up for you?"_

"No," said Ben. He had already accepted his place here, knew firsthand that there was something to learn in the grasp of the Embrace and Jacen, a lesson his mother would want him to grasp for the good of their mission. "It's right to stay."

"_You know that I haven't come here to save you, Ben. I haven't come here to provide you with a miraculous escape from the galaxy around you. I haven't come with false promises that everything will return to normal again, that you will forget all about what has happened here, that you will return to what you were. I love you too much to lie to you. I'm here to tell you that you can make it through this, and become stronger for it. We reject weakness in the service of the weak. We consume pain so we might serve the suffering. That is our place."_

Ben nodded, tiredly. Among all the other pains, it also hurt him to remain awake when he was so deeply exhausted.

"Ben?" The ghost of his mother looked terrified. "Ben—whatever you see—whatever he's doing in your mind—it's wrong. You have to believe me. He's a Sith Lord. He's murdered me. He was ready to murder you, too. What he's told you, what he's trying to make you into, it's all lies."

"_No, it's right. It's all right. What we are—what we do—we do for everyone. I died for you. I died to give you this chance so that you might do what I couldn't."_

"Mom—why didn't you tell dad that you were going to kill him? Why didn't the Council help you?"

"It's complicated, Ben—you don't know everything I know. What Jacen is—what he wants—I had to stop him."

_"Case in point."_

"Ben, death is better than what he wants to turn you into—"

The near ghost kept talking, but the thunder in the voice of the second drowned her out.

"_I must be your first sacrifice of many, Ben. You have to leave me behind. Where we walk, we must give up our lesser loves. I loved life, and I gave it up, for my supreme love: you. Your cousin loved me, and he offered me up for a supreme love of his own. If I am your supreme love, you can join me. If the galaxy is your supreme love, you must go with him. You know that I will understand. You know that I love you very much."_

The lightsaber, Ben's own, came down, and hovered centimeters away from his neck.

Ben was no fool. He understood the trick, and the trial. It was so simple, so clear to him now, so much a test Jacen would make, and yet it would hurt to deny her just as much as it would have hurt if she were real. They looked so perfect, those fantasies of his mother that Jacen had conjured—those eyes, even through the spectral blue—perfect in fidelity, all just as he remembered her. He turned his head to Jacen, who met his stare evenly, but his eyes were alive with dancing gold.

"Choose, and act," Caedus said.

Ben did both. He didn't hesitate; as much as it would hurt, the answer to this riddle was simple. Death was tempting, escape was a pleasing fantasy—but so was the hope of ever _knowing _what she had really thought and done, that she approved—but all that was part of the past. Life and Jacen and the present were his duty, not death or his mother or the past. it was enough to remember her, and know what she would have wanted for him, and know that Jacen here had made another test, the first of many, in rendering her and offering him two types of temptation, and of course he knew what must be done. He had to say goodbye, and, as ever, grow stronger through the rejection.

"Son—"

He was not expected to choose one memory of his mother over the other—nothing so amateur—he was expected to choose neither. This was the trick, the sleight of hand: both visions, both the temptation of escape and the pleasure of understanding, had to be left behind, because his mother was dead and never coming back, and the best he could do for her memory was live as she would have wanted him to live, fixing what had become broken in the clockwork agony of the cosmos.

"Make it go away, Jacen," he wheezed. He would always love his mother, but he had to give her up. "Make it go away. I don't need to see her again. I don't need this."

Pain was all he knew. It was all he could ever know. He had to endure pain, take it all inside of himself, so that others did not have to. He had to sacrifice, so others did not have to. Pain was the way the galaxy told him he was doing right. Pain was a test designed to keep all but the most devoted off the path of greatness. His mother had known this, and she would have understood why he had to do this. She had known the greatest pain, laying down life for love, alone in the dark. He couldn't be a slave to the irretrievable past. The only way through was forward.

The spirit of Mara Jade flickered, like a little flame in the wind, and tears streamed down her spectral face. Her green eyes looked past Ben, at Jacen. Holding Ben's own lightsaber to the boy's neck, he gazed at her with a mild expression of calm curiosity, but from the furious churning of his golden eyes she could tell that the monster inside was sneering.

"He is worse than Palpatine. Ben, he's going to make you into something—"

"_Wonderful. You will be unbound. You will be free. You will be loved by the entire galaxy. You will be right, and do right. You will make a galaxy where there can only be right. You will be a gardener. You will make a galaxy where whole worlds bloom like flowers. You will forge a peace that will never end. You will smite evil. You will be a man, and so much more than a man. You will surpass your father's legacy. You would have made your mother proud."_

Ben managed against every sensation in him to stand up and face them, slowly, his entire broken body screaming as he did so. The lightsaber rose from his neck as he strained against the cold durasteel of the floor. Hands, then knees, then upright, staggering as he groped for a sense of balance that had atrophied in long disuse—and through all of it Jacen sustained him.

"I need a master. I need strength. I don't want to escape, any more. I understand why she died for me, and now I need you, not my mother. Jacen, I'm ready to begin."

His mind howled as he spoke, but the promise that sacrifice would strengthen him was like cool air in the hell that was denying the image of his mother who had laid her life down for him in the dark.

"Jacen, let me out."

The truth was a lie. That was only right. But still they hung there, limp, like puppets suspended by invisible strings.

"You don't mean it. You don't mean any of it. He's broken you. But it's not too late. I'll—I'll—"

"Jacen, you were always everything I wanted to be," Ben said.

_"You must make it final. Tell me the truth. Show me that you understand."_

He resisted the waxing urge to fall the floor and abandon consciousness once again.

"There's nothing more to tell. I don't talk to imaginary friends. I remember her, but she died, and nothing will bring her back. I remember her, and I will go on without her. I will follow in her footsteps, and I will finish her work, but I have you, now. That's enough. Now get these lies out of my head."

The ghost of Mara Jade Skywalker looked at her son, then her nephew, and back again, her eyes black and still like embers just snuffed out, suddenly wavering in the air as if she had only just realized she was something far less than alive. Ben couldn't help but shiver. Comprehension began to dawn inside of him. Mara Jade took a faltering lurch forward, gave her son a kiss on the forehead that he could not feel, and she fell through him, and then she was gone, like a candle blown out. Ben blinked, chest heaving, and the far Mara Jade became fuzzy and indistinct, until she was only a cold distant smile and a pair of golden eyes, and then she was nothing at all.

"Wait," Ben breathed, his eyes widening in dawning horror, as he realized that the trick had not been the trick he had thought at all. "Which—what—but, both of them—"

And Jacen Solo, all cold gold, only smiled back.

Darth Caedus and Ben Skywalker, master and apprentice, teacher and student, were once again alone as the Embrace of Pain writhed overhead.


	4. Embrace

**III. EMBRACE**

_Let us embrace, and from this very moment vow an eternal misery together.  
Thomas Otway_

—

They watched each other for a long time. Caedus stood bolt upright, dark and handsome in his GAG uniform, wrapped in the shadow that had once again overtaken the chamber. His eyes, reduced to quiet seething bronze, churned within the shadows that played across his face. He was smiling.

Ben's bare chest heaved, and his fever-tinged skin was slick with sweat. He was still coming to terms with what had just happened: a lesson within a trick, which was not at all the trick he had anticipated. It had been his mother he had denied, he now knew, his real, one and only mother, returned from the dead to save him. He had just rejected her utterly, as if she had been nothing more than the crude puppet her murderer had forced into his mind. Puckered scars ran down his body, and his blue eyes were dulled with horror.

When Jacen had hung him in the Embrace, some interminable time ago, Ben had thought that it could get no worse. And when he had overcome the pain of the Embrace, he had been so certain that the agony was forever more beneath him.

How wrong he had been.

Ben staggered, but Caedus kept him from falling.

"I don't deny it. Do you hate me, Ben? Do you want to kill me?"

Caedus held the lightsaber out to Ben Skywalker, and Ben took it in his hands. It was his own, the one he had built, but it was cold, somehow heavier, more unwieldy than he remembered it. How long had it been since he had tried to use this same lightsaber to kill this same man who now stood before him, apparently defenseless? Ben had no clue—in the Embrace, time ran forever.

Ben lurched forward, and pressed the lightsaber against the chest of the man who had destroyed his world, and the man did not stop him. Jacen's wide, wolfish smile flickered—for a moment, Ben could have sworn he felt a pang of longing echo through the hollow place where the Force had once been, but it vanished instantly.

Ben loathed Jacen. Jacen had carefully and deliberately stoked the cinders of war with the Confederacy into a galaxy-consuming inferno. Jacen had made him into a murderer, an assassin, taught him all he knew about how to snuff out life. Jacen had killed Mara Jade—had just killed her twice over, he realized—had attempted to kill Luke Skywalker—Jacen had at least considered killing him too, at some point, he was certain. Jacen had tortured him, changed him, reforged him in ways he still did not fully understand. Jacen had made him fully and awfully forsake the mother he loved, without really understanding the gravity and fullness and irrevocability of it, and now he smiled in answer to the accusation. Jacen was a Sith, and somewhere abstractly he knew that word was supposed to be everything he hated—arrogant, ruthless, evil, wrong.

But for all that, part of Ben still loved Jacen. Jacen had awakened him to the Force, welcomed him into the larger galaxy, which had seemed so frightening to him when viewed through the lens of the Force. He had done it with a careful hand, with subtlety and skill and depth. Jacen had taught him so much—he could not imagine what he would be without Jacen's teaching, without the words and knowledge and skills Jacen had taught. Even if he had killed Jacen, that long time ago, he still would have heard him within his head for the rest of his life. Jacen was powerful, so powerful, and even blind to the Force he felt Jacen's inhuman mastery of the Force looming over him. Staring into his molten eyes he saw twin galaxies, turned by Sith hands. And all he wanted was peace for everyone always, all he had given up was sacrificed in the name of a coming order, fuel for his enormous crusade. Jacen had taught him in spite of his resistance—had protected him from himself. Even now, even as the full extent of Ben's unwitting betrayal of his mother buffeted him, he knew that he was becoming stronger for what had just taken place. Even now, he could anticipate what Jacen would say, in his calm, sad, wise, cruel voice: it was terrible, and it was necessary.

Ben stood, looking up at Darth Caedus, his thumb on the switch that would send a band of pure energy through the heart of the Sith. For a long moment Ben thought about turning it on himself in one smooth rapid motion and ending his own misery forever. At last, he dropped it. It hit the durasteel with an echoing harsh clang.

"Yes. But no," Ben said, "I can't kill you. I don't even want to. Not yet."

"Be certain of this, though you doubt all else: you will try, and when you do you will want it more than you have ever wanted anything," said Darth Caedus. He turned to look at the Embrace. "Ben Skywalker, I have tested you, and I have broken you, and you have done more than merely survived the onslaught—you have exceeded expectations. I am well pleased. Your time here is at an end. I want you to become my apprentice, and also my partner. But in this, I cannot force you. This must be a choice that you make of your own free will. Before you choose, I want there to be no more secrets between us. I know you, but you do not yet know me. Let me show you."

Ben felt Jacen's power, all burning in the Force and all alien and cold and smoldering all at once, moving within his mind—dark fingers twisting through his brain with a familiarity so _wrong _that it made his skin crawl. Jacen reached down into the defenseless stores of memory and sensation of Ben's mind, and he felt new pathways opening—no, he realized as he remembered, old pathways that he had forgotten—sealed doors inside of himself that he did not even know existed. Motion by motion, fog that had been invisible cleared inside of him cleared. Then the memories came back, all in a rush, the whole timeline of his life lurching.

_Ta'a Chume. Nelani Dinn and Lumiya._

_Allana._

_And the recurring image of Jacen looming over him, murmuring to his apprentice to be calm, that it would not hurt, that it would only take a moment, with his eyes burning, as his memories were torn away._

Ben swam in them, first in horror, then in dawning comprehension. He wavered on emaciated legs. Revelations washed over Ben Skywalker in shades of scarlet and rust-red, and he looked upon Jacen Solo with new understanding. His master's fall was no longer something abstract and awful and absent of reason—Ben had been there for each step of the precipitous descent, each piece of the rationale for Jacen's great crusade, and had only been made to forget for a time—all the answers had been locked away inside of him all along. He knew now that Jacen's supreme love was indeed precious to him above all things. He knew the terrible symmetry of all that had happened: Mara Jade had been ready to kill for her son, and Jacen Solo was ready to kill for his daughter.

"All these things—for her. For your family. From the beginning."

Caedus nodded, looking wholly tired. "I have sacrificed a great deal for them. I am going to sacrifice much more. There is a great deal that I hope my daughter never has to know." His smile had faded; to Ben he appeared terribly and suddenly sad, as his mother's face had been, at the end. "A parent's love is a terrifying thing. I would set worlds aflame to protect her. I would fight one final war."

"You would break your apprentice, and then recruit him to your new cause."

"Yes. And that would only be the beginning. You know now that I am a Sith Lord, Ben, and you know how I fell, and you know that I am offering to teach you. You know why I must fight. You should also know my name. Jacen Solo is a shell—you have seen me change—even in your blindness, you sense that I am someone else, now."

He turned from the Embrace and stepped forward smoothly, bent to Ben's height so that they were eye to eye. The shadows of his face seemed to grow and deepen as he gazed, his eyes churning from dull, seething bronze to dancing molten gold. His voice was a croak, but all at once seductive and dripping with menace.

He was terrible and magnificent.

"I am Darth Caedus. What are you?"

"I was Ben Skywalker."

"You were. But what are you now? What will you become?"

Ben pondered this—even without the Force, he felt the significance of this moment, like the entire galaxy was balanced upon his reply. This was the point of no return. This was becoming a Sith. There was no trick to this, no sleight of hand, just the one question he never thought he would answer—at least, not like this. First the Embrace, then his mother, his true mother, now memories that swam across his vision, flickering Jacen Solo through time and space, descending into the dark.

Looking into the truth of Caedus's eyes, parsing his restored memories, he had no doubt that the wrong answer would mean swift death. Sacrifice was not a foreign concept to either of them, now. The secrets that had been entrusted to him could only belong to a willing partner or a silent corpse. But that was not the issue—he had learned there were things far worse than death. After everything that had happened to him, death was not such a terrible option—a blessed release. He was almost tempted.

But then the realization of duty hit him once more, and he felt ashamed at such a moment of weakness—he didn't want to die, yet, couldn't, not at all. There was too much he needed to do. He didn't even want to escape. Even if he did, even if he left here, things would never be the same. Ben Skywalker could never be a Jedi again, not after seeing the order within the limitless expanse of pain, not after realizing the simultaneous and tragic and necessary deaths of Mara Jade Skywalker and Jacen Solo, not without understanding the beguiling mystery of the seed of hope they had planted in him.

The change had already occurred; the scales had been shifting inside of him since the very moment he had first found truth in Caedus's words against the white storm of the Embrace.

Ben Skywalker had already betrayed the world he had known. Darth Caedus could give him the power he needed, the power he was obligated to take. It was nothing less than the very same power that Jacen—Caedus—wielded so deftly. The first pulse of excitement ran through Ben as he saw the potential, giving him strength to lift his head and meet the gaze of the Dark Lord of the Sith. He stared Jacen down, and Jacen stared back, like he was looking all through him and past him all at once with those shifting shadowed eyes. There could be no other choice. He wanted to become a Sith. And that made the answer very easy.

"I am whatever you want me to be. I am whatever you choose to teach me."

In the golden eyes, Ben saw power that could consume worlds, and fix them—unfathomable, and so lovely.

"Good answer, apprentice."

Caedus smiled again, all wolf, and then stood to his full height once more. In an instant he was composed again, with all the majesty not gone but merely withdrawn into a subtler form, the image of a tired man with nary a trace of Sithhood but with the silent surging control of someone who would change the galaxy. His eyes were brown and gentle, full of compassion and sympathy as he gave Ben's shoulder a friendly squeeze. The ligaments in Ben's shoulder were stretched raw, tender from long abuse in the bone-grinding posture of Embrace, arms outstretched far beyond what the human structure ever intended. Before, Ben would have screamed in hoarse agony. Now, he suffered in blissful silence, his eyes widening as it washed over him.

"You have made me very proud, Ben. You are going to be all I hoped for and even more. This is the hardest path, and I am honored you have chosen to walk it with me, until one of us walks no more. I am proud that you have seen beyond the veil, and that you understand our burden. " His gaze fell for a moment to his polished boots. "Everything that I've done to you—to your family. To your childhood. I have banished you from that land, and I am sorry that it was necessary at all. You won't be going back. But I do swear to you that this is a fight worth fighting. That is our truth."

The boy who had been Ben Skywalker remembered his childhood, his family, the Jedi he had been. He remembered the mother that he had denied, without even knowing that she was real, but the horror was gone. It felt cold inside of him, and he knew that he did not miss what he had been. He knew that he did not miss what could have been.

"Lieutenant Skywalker, for now I will be informally reinstating your commission with the Galactic Alliance Guard. Let's say that your desertion was a question of selling a deep cover. I will see you tomorrow morning in my office for your briefing. I expect you to be presentable by then. You were in there for three months and a day, by the way. We need to talk about what has changed politically since you went under. A uniform and a keycard are on the table. I will have bacta patches and bandages sent to your room. And a solid meal—have fun with that. The crew of this ship is of course sworn to secrecy, but still minimize your time in common areas to what is strictly necessary."

"Yes, master."

Caedus turned, and the door slid open to reveal an antiseptic white hallway. His black silhouette was framed against it, and he stopped.

"I do not need to tell you, apprentice, that there are no second chances for our kind. If you fail me, I will end you."

"Likewise. Master."

The silhouette's shoulders shook with a silent shudder of laughter.

"You will try, Ben Skywalker. You will try."

Jacen made to leave, but stopped at the threshold. He looked back.

"Satisfy my curiosity," he said. "If you had really known, then, that the ghost was actually your mother, that she could have saved you, would you have chosen differently?"

Ben rolled his shoulders. It hurt fantastically.

"I can't say," he answered. "I don't know."

"Yes. You never will. Until tomorrow, apprentice."

Darth Caedus left, and the door slid shut behind him. Alone once more, Ben bandaged the worst of the wounds that were still exposed, and he found the uniform on a table otherwise occupied by an exotic array of torture implements, and he donned it. Every step hurt, every movement made him ache, every thought was like a proton torpedo going off in his head—Jacen gave him no sustenance now. It was only by way of his own willpower that he remained conscious as he prepared himself to leave the chamber and begin a new life, unlike anything he had known.

When he had finished dressing the wounds and donning his uniform, he stepped towards the door. He looked at the door, down at his uniform, and then he hesitated. He turned back to the writhing Embrace, still reaching out in blind hunger for his flesh, ready to entangle him once more. He stepped back towards it.

He extended a single hand, palm upward, beckoning, and a bioluminescent vine tipped by a wicked barb reached out in return. Slowly, tenderly, lovingly, like a dear friend saying goodbye, it stabbed into the flesh of his hand. The tip emerged on the other side, dripping blood.

Ben's eyes rolled upwards.

What he saw there was beautiful beyond words.


	5. Sunrise

**IV. SUNRISE**

_We sleep, but the loom of life never stops, and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning.  
Henry Ward Beecher_

—

Lost in another eternal sleepless night, Luke Skywalker was acutely aware that he was a man alone in a galaxy aflame. Not since the alienated days of his youth had he felt so distant from the people around him. Of course, in the morning he would put on a stern face, he would mask his presence, he would lead his Jedi, his friends, what was left of his family, he would show no outward sign of the inward agony that had begun weeks ago when he had felt his son die. He would bide time, he would implement half measures, he would keep the Jedi running—and all the while he would wait unblinkingly for Jacen Solo to make a mistake. But in the night it was not so simple as that. He felt as if he had been mortally wounded twice over, and everything since had been a slow, bleeding death. Any sort of prospect for recovery was dubious. His family had been taken away from him, and it had been so fast, and he had been so completely powerless. He wasn't as young as he once was; this time he couldn't pick up the wreckage and start over, as he had so many times before. He had gotten too used to waking up with his wife next to him. That struck him as a severe error in retrospect. He had even gotten used to feeling his son, ever shining and growing in the Force, so much like himself, so much a beacon of potential and brightness, and now everything outside of himself seemed to be possessed of a profound silence.

How long had death followed Luke Skywalker—how many times had its grasp missed him by millimeters? Less? Really, death was there from the first moment—life had greeted him even as death had claimed his mother. And ever since he had left Tattooine, death had pursued ever after, hot on his heels—always close, always terrifying, always so painful, when it would miss him and strike one of the people he cared about. But it never came so near that it could do permanent damage to him—at least, not until he lost Mara and then Ben in the span of a few short weeks. He had been so lucky, for such a long time, and now, maybe inevitably, it had all returned to nothing.

Luke Skywalker was a man powerful beyond measure, but for his dead wife and his dead son there was nothing to be done.

Oh, Mara. Oh, Ben. They were one with the Force, for what good that did him. One with the Force—some comfort for a widower who had outlived his only son, an outlaw on the run from the government he had made, hunted by the nephew he had loved and taught and believed privately, for a long time, to be the future of the Jedi. His nephew. It was hard to even think of Jacen—he was afraid of where those thoughts could lead. How could one not be tempted toward dark acts when it came to the man who had murdered an innocent—utterly innocent—fourteen year old boy? Disregarding entirely the fact that the boy was his only son—

He unclenched his fists. He couldn't remember clenching them.

It was hard to touch the light, a sensation worrying and unfamiliar to him, and his memory played over and over again the night when Ben had escaped from the protection of the Jedi. He could have done everything different, but he hadn't, and that choice could never be revised. They had been en route to the new Jedi sanctuary on Endor, and Ben had stolen an X-Wing from one of the battered Jedi migratory corvettes during a routine refueling stop, and he had been gone before anyone had known to triangulate his vector. Luke had Jacen to thank for this too—Jacen had taught Ben how to conceal himself within the Force, and feeling him in those last moments had been like feeling a silhouette of his son, empty of all hope and light, wreathed only in rage, and when they had landed there had been rain, heavy and thick and tinged with the smell of evergreens and the overpowering earth-scent, and the ion wash of their stolen ships slicing crescents into the night sky beyond the high treetops. There was nothing to be done—Luke knew Ben had gone to Jacen, but Ben knew far more about Jacen's movements than Luke did. And, a few days later, when he had felt his son die, his worst fear had been realized.

Luke's stomach lurched, as it always did, at the thought of what his nephew had done to his only son. Horror, unimaginable horror, waited down that path. Blackness there tasted of the Emperor, and of his own forays into the darkness, and of the overpowering darkness that surged in all of his visions of the future. He tried to put Jacen Solo out of his mind, but he was omnipresent in that darkness, dancing in it. Luke turned, but the memories would not cease.

He forced himself into another cycle of breathing exercises. One of these nights he would have to put himself into a healing trance lest the insomnia do some permanent damage, but the thought made his stomach churn. The Force itself had been sullied—or he was sullying it—and going down into it was unappealing to him in a way it had never been before. But that could wait, a few days more at least. The sun would rise soon, and then he would be able to force the awfulness from his mind for a time, and go through the motions of leading. Still, the sun had to rise.

—

As the night dragged on, unending, the boy who had been Ben Skywalker lay awake on his cot learning to love the pain. How could he sleep when there was so much for him to feel? He loved it all. He loved the long, lovely scarlet lines the Embrace had lashed deep into his skin. He loved the staccato pinpricks the thorns made as they had caressed his body, and the relief, really a different kind of pain, as he had extracted those thorns one by one from the flesh of his flank with the flat side of a knife, doubled over in the refresher in silent awe at the scale and scope of his body's capacity for sensation. He loved the deep hunger and terrible thirst that had assailed him, the little crackles of electricity that had sent his body into convulsions, the feeling of his muscles stretched beyond the breaking point, of his bones grinding together in ways that were never intended. Eating again after three months of intravenous subsistence administered by the Embrace had been an exquisite agony all its own—he had forgotten all the tastes but the taste of his own blood. He loved the swirling fiery bursts inside as his immune system battled the poisons and viruses that had been injected into his blood stream—it was all song, true and right and beautiful. It was art. In all of it was written his own incredible capacity for overcoming, for triumph, for understanding derived above all from the horror of the galaxy which was pointless only in seeming. As he lay there, beholding the art, he had never felt stronger.

And like any good art, it became greater as Ben's capacity for understanding it increased. He gradually came to see how the Embrace had assaulted each sense and aspect of the body individually, came to appreciate its ability to keep him at all times on the sublime threshold of death, but also to constantly top itself, using the data it derived from the way his body reacted to stimuli to evolve means of torture that grew only more effective, becoming more blissfully powerful with every passing moment.

_Torture?_

That word seemed wrong to Ben, because in retrospect torture was not what he had experienced. The idea of torture had peeled back to reveal only knowledge and power, facets of the same truth, all the way down. It traced itself back to his first memories—cradled in the womb, defenseless against the horror and pain and anguish of a whole galaxy aflame around him. He had chosen to hide from it, spent years as a boy denying the Force that had been the harbinger of agony. Jacen had awoken him, then, to his true nature as a being capable of using the Force.

Jacen had awoken him now, brought him fully and irrevocably into a world where there was only pain. Jacen had shown him that he could bear all the pain in the universe, take it all inside of himself and make it strength—suffer so that no one would ever have to suffer again—suffer and understand suffering, make suffering a vehicle for victory, make suffering into only strength. He could love pain. Love was pain.

In the darkness, love and pain washed over him, until he could no longer tell which was which, and so he loved the pain, and the pain loved him in return.

—

Darth Caedus could not sleep, though he was very tired. He sat in his chair, in his office, waiting for his body to acknowledge his mind's need for rest. This was nothing new. Through the viewport, he could see Coruscant Prime mounting the glittering city-world below. Life surged around him—on the _Anakin Solo_as the crew shifts changed, as billions of beings awoke on the planet that was the center of his galaxy.

He tried to still himself, to watch the sunrise, but his mind would not cease, relentlessly turning upon itself. First and always there were his primary concerns: his apprentice, the war, the Jedi, his wife and daughter; then there were concerns that would wait down the line, if he could survive the next few months—still a long shot, but far more possible now than it had been—the infant New Sith Order on Korriban, Alema Rar, the Senate, Cha Niathal—they would all be waiting. And couldn't he give himself one night, one solitary night, to focus on the enormous triumph, successful beyond all estimation, that the turning of Ben had been thus far? How he had faced the bottom of his plans falling out, and turned it into a fuller victory than he could have ever dared hope? Had he not earned at least that much—

He stilled himself. No, the sense that any of it was overwhelming was false. There would be time and means to handle each challenge in turn if only he could be strong enough to make it there. Everything could resolve itself with planning and thought and action. In truth his plans looked far healthier that morning than they had at any point in months.

What he really needed now was foresight, uncolored by his own anxieties and perspective. Now was as good of a time as any to meditate on the future, he reasoned, and the more he could practice future-scrying techniques the easier it would be to marshal them during crisis situations in the future—it was, at the very least, a better investment of time than more tossing and turning and trying to coax his consciousness into an all too brief lull. The idea of a lull was a misnomer, anyway; the ceaseless nightmares made sleep anything but restful. He took a few steady breaths, and then he opened himself fully to the wellspring of the Force, as he so rarely could, and was humbled by its wholeness and order and glory.

As he did it, he felt for just a moment the shrinking presences of wife and his former friends, withdrawing from his touch even as he withdrew from them. His ship would only be in orbit over Coruscant until evening, but that was just the sort of information that he did not want to betray to them. They fell silent, and all that was left was himself and the mass of life—all except the bonfire of Luke Skywalker, which did not withdraw but merely burned and burned, far away, but like an unblinking eye had locked on him the moment he had come up. But Jacen knew shadowy pathways, quiet dark places, where Luke could not or would not follow. He went deep down into arcane places where fundamental cosmic forces interacted—he drew himself into them, let them run through him for just a moment, the most dangerous part, and then he dug in, exerted his power, wrenched the flow around him open like tearing flesh. Through the wound he escaped into places where few could follow, amidst the strands of flowing future: long and thin, golden, millions of threads dividing and uniting as he watched, all unified into a shimmering tapestry by the emergence of the present.

He watched it for a moment, humbled by the beauty and the potential and the constant reminder in the back of his head that a wrong step, an errant thought, could tear him apart. These were places not meant for men. The strands embodied individuals, events, ideas, places. Visions flickered in his mind, and he was scattered across space, watching shapes in the threads and sunrise over Coruscant and all the potential in the universe at once. He reached into them, and they overcame him, flashing along the edge of his capacity to comprehend:

_The knife. Its hilt rose starkly from his chest, the last wound of many. What blood had not splattered or sprayed now oozed, purple-black, not like liquid at all in the dim light. It spread like creeping moss, expanded over the durasteel into a shining pool. Then he was silent, perfectly still, his glassy flat eyes locked on something beyond the steel that glittered._

_The smell. The air was heavy with it, and the dust, and the light, filtered from far above, all redolent of cauterized flesh, old wounds and new ones, freshly made—smoke was still rising from wounds that would heal badly or never heal at all. There were eyes glittering in the darkness, tender, suffering, knowing. There was understanding, a shared injury, and then, tentatively, a light shape moving over water._

_The believer. The apprentice watched, all quiet and certain and still, but only bodily, the least part of himself—in the Force he was a firestorm, taking all the pain and consuming it, feeding upon every screaming nerve in his body, feeding upon the terrible weight of sacrifice. Only then was it clear that he could become a singularity that would take all the pain in existence and use it, and in so doing nothing would ever be the same. Only then was it clear that Yun-Yuuzhan had never died, but had merely been waiting to be born._

_The family. His love watched him with sad eyes, and she knew everything. There was nothing left to hide. She was wavering even as she stood rock steady. How divine she appeared to him in inaction—even as she teetered before the fall. He reached out to her, beckoning, his hand hanging in the air. Hers rose to meet it, tenderly. The Force shifted, like tectonic plates grinding together, and the pact was sealed._

_The wheel. And the wheels within it—all turning in full rotations, all clockwork forever, all damned and damning. At the center was Coruscant, turning everything, all things moving in cycles that could be his to define. It was his, his to reach out and hold, to shape until the stars bloomed like flowers before his eyes. Or, perhaps, he could break them all._

_The lightsaber came down. It fell slowly, falling like the air itself was thick enough to cut. It drew closer, enveloped the world, but he was ready for it. Rest. He was so ready for rest at last. His work was done, his final lesson taught through his own death, for that was the way of the Sith. Red was everything his eyes could see, crimson all he knew as it made first contact with his skin, and then went through_—

Caedus sealed himself off from the Force instantly, thrashing out of the deep meditation he had sunken into until he was once again alone in the quiet office. His heart was pounding relentlessly, wrenching and releasing for all it was worth. Gasping, he checked Ben's lightsaber on his belt, the vibroblade hidden in his sleeve, the holdout blaster he concealed in his boot. They were in order. He relaxed slightly. Tentatively, he reached out into the Force again, drew upon it for strength, and confirmed that there were no out of the ordinary presences aboard the ship, no immediate omens of danger. He sagged in his chair.

He had seen his own death in the future many times before, but it had never come so close to feeling what death _was_, and the vision of it had never been truly vivid, never from his own immediate perspective. It was equally likely that he had drifted to sleep, momentarily, and a nightmare had co-opted his vision, but that wasn't much comfort at all. Still, mastering himself, he checked his chrono. His apprentice was due shortly. The issue of his mortality would have to wait. So would whatever significance the other visions had carried—but those he would have to meditate on further. If anything, he had gained more proof that auspicious things waited to be coaxed out of those threads, if he could only forestall that final moment long enough.

Darth Caedus was sure of two things as he forced his heart to calm, wiped the sweat from his brow, cradled his aching head in his hands. The first thing he was sure of was that he could cheat death—he had before, and he was certain beyond any shadow of a doubt that he would again—not forever, but he had at least a few more in him. The second thing he was sure of was that when the day did come to put down his burdens, he would die with purpose, in the service of the galaxy he so dearly wanted to save. With that thought, the relentless plotting began once more. This time he welcomed it.

—

Alema Rar was dreaming of Balance. For her, balance was universe where all debts were paid in full, where every crime was punished, where what was right did not triumph, but at least canceled out what had gone wrong; stars and planets, space and beings and the Force—all tranquil and even, above all finally still. The galaxy in Balance would be her great mirror, all precisely arrayed and shaped so that in it she would see herself whole and beautiful again. Everyone who had been part of turning her into a horror would be mangled in turn, made scarred and twisted and mad. She could see it as if it were already real, could hold it up to the dismal reality and feel down into the scarred flesh just how possible and necessary her mission was.

An unmarred hand rose to touch an unmarred face, and eyes that had not seen horrors opened.

She was awake, for a moment lucid, thinking of the stars, so like the shattered fragments that spun through the void of her mind. At least, that was what she knew all the Jedi imagined. But Alema Rar was not nearly so mad as they all thought, she reminded herself. She simply knew what she wanted, which was a lot more than most of those butchers could say. But the scales were so different this morning—so much closer to what she lived to realize—the Balance was shifting momentously, tilting towards perfection, and she knew something wonderful had happened.

It was like an earthquake pulsing through her, like the fractured crystal was shining down the sharp lines, resonating, playing deep, true notes that made her shiver with pleasure. She reached out into the crescendo of righteousness, and for a moment she was the universe correcting itself.

She could feel the heart of it—she could feel that Jacen Solo and his ever greater power had become the center of a galaxy turning towards the justice she so richly deserved.

The Lord-To-Be needed her, for he was all of her dreams moving toward totality. Clearly, then, she would have no choice but to find him, and offer him her humble service.


	6. Lesson

**V. LESSON**

_The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.  
Aldous Huxley_

—

The door opened with a soft hiss, and the master looked upon the apprentice. His student was sallow, gaunt and severe in his matte black uniform. To the mundane senses, he had cleaned up fairly well—but for a bandaged hand, there were no visible signs of the Embrace's passage. He stood bolt upright, and in the Force Darth Caedus could feel pain, not at all unwelcome, rolling off of him in waves.

"Come in," he said, rising from behind his desk. The apprentice moved forward, the slightest limp in his step. The door slid shut behind him, locked with a barely perceptible _click_. Caedus gestured to the floor. "We'll meditate, like we did when we were Jedi." They sat on the floor across from each other, legs crossed. Caedus watched his student for a long time, analyzing. Then he spoke.

"You probably already understand this, but it bears repeating. That you are currently alive at all, let alone once again on active duty with the Guard, is a state secret of the highest level, classified to all save myself and the senior crew of this ship. As far as your father knows, and so as far as any Jedi knows, you are dead and I am your probable murderer."

"All true, in a sense," Ben said.

Caedus grinned.

"All the best lies begin with a seed of truth. The changes within you will assist me considerably in masking your presence from the people who knew you. Of course, only at my discretion are you to leave the officer's quarters of this ship. Only when I feel the right time has come will your continued existence be revealed to the galaxy at large. There is much to be done to prepare the way for that day. This is a time of great opportunity, and a time to take great care. You are Force-blind, and you are walking through the land of the dead, but you are far from powerless. I am going to teach you a great deal very quickly. I neglected important aspects of your education in my haste and secrecy, and while we prepare the way for your return to the Force I will be fixing that mistake. Let me start, though, by filling you in on some of what's happened while you were... occupied."

"Please."

"The war has settled into a stalemate. The Jedi mostly sabotage and retreat. The admirals and I have been focused more on preempting further secession than on reclaiming worlds or taking the fight to either the Order or the Confederacy. Generally, we've had success; a system hasn't seceded in more than a week."

"But you haven't even been trying to deter Jedi attacks?"

"Only in cases where it would be severely harmful to my personal interests or the war effort to let them have their way. Letting the Jedi play at being terrorists and monsters in the dark is very convenient for me in particular and the Galactic Alliance Guard in general; why stop them? Anyway, our hope is that without continual materiel reinforcement coming in from new worlds, inevitable fractures will begin to form in the Confederate alliance structure and the Confederacy's severely lacking shipyard capacity will begin to come into play. Turr Phennir is a wily opponent, but the admirals I have who are actually loyal to me are quite good."

"What about Hapes?"

"No progress. Still silent in the face of every sort of diplomatic entreaty imaginable. For now, getting Hapes back in our camp is not an immediately feasible goal. But in the longer run, if we can only stop further secession outright and grind the Confederacy down a little, renewed access to the Hapan fleet could be decisive. A vital corollary of our anti-secession policy is that at least we've scared Hapes away from joining the Confederacy lest we retaliate like we did on Kashyyyk or Commenor. That will have to do for the time being. Admiral Niathal is, well, still Admiral Niathal—you'll be dealing with her soon enough. Never, ever trust her or take a word she says at face value. She is more snake than squid. She knows very little about very little, and I've got her on the back heel for now, but she is still dangerous. You won't be dealing directly with the other admirals while we are still keeping your continued existence a secret, but all that goes double for them when you do. Too many of them are still Jedi loyalists. If they smell blood, it's not going to be pretty."

"We have advantages of our own."

"True. For example, one of the benefits of the stalemate is that I have had time to cement my position with the Senate. We won't need to worry about obstruction from that direction. They're going to rubber stamp anything I propose, and drag anything at cross purposes into the sort of administrative hellfire only the Galactic Alliance Senate can stoke."

"You were already well on the way to taking over the Senate when I went under. How did you do it?"

"Three reasons. One: I more directly represent core-ward interests than Niathal or the Jedi or Omas did to begin with. The core was always basically bound to support me anyway; the secession of rim worlds has only made the core more politically powerful in the remainder. Two: by way of the GAG charter I can monitor all potential traitors to the Alliance in basically every capacity, including Senators—we have the Cal Omas incident to thank for that. So I have acquired a monopoly on secrets Senators have a considerable interest in keeping buried. Three: I have planted varying degrees of mental suggestion in some key Senators. With all that working in concert, I don't even really need emergency powers except for contingency plans—the Senate would give me them, and a lot more, by any other name."

"Do the Jedi still think Alema Rar killed my mother?"

"Happily, yes. They've been chasing her across the galaxy to no avail as of yet. She's been useful in that capacity, though she's far too erratic to ever trust. For now, there's nothing to be done but let her rampage and distract the Jedi from us. But enough about current events. You'll be neck deep in all that soon enough. I want to begin our new lessons together by reflecting on a question that troubles me, even to this day: Why are there Skywalkers, and why do they suffer? What are we for? For a line that was supposed to bring balance to the Force, it sometimes seems like we have only brought ruin upon ruin."

"I found an answer to that in the Embrace. I think it's in all of us. I can see it now. We were made for agony."

"It seems right to me that our first lesson be the lesson in our blood, that has brought us here into what the Jedi call the dark. That pluripotent seed of our family, born out of suffering—not just to do good or evil, but to do the greatest good and the greatest evil. I have wondered in less optimistic moments if our line is cursed by the Force. It seems that we are given previous little in exchange for our great burdens—our truly terrible burdens, far larger than any individual in a fair galaxy should have to face. What is the little strength in our young and lopsided family tree before a million worlds calling out to be saved, before war after war and fall after fall? Soul by soul, the Force has conspired to tear the Skywalkers apart. First and foremost, our grandfather attempted to forge a new order built upon only the best of intentions. He sought a peace for the galaxy that he had never been able to build as a Jedi, tortured as he was by the death of his mother, driven as he was to guarantee the safety of his growing family. He was haunted by visions of the future, and his own actions brought those visions into reality—and they say I am blind to parallels. Of course, the Force brought him to ruin: inverted his intentions, crippled him, made him a slave to everything he hated. It eventually brought his death, along with the death of everything he had struggled for—and all this at the hands of his own son.

"Your father has devoted his life to bringing about a true peace, and the Force has laid him low in turn. His family is shattered, his order is utterly incapable of surviving without his leadership, and he has abandoned the government he helped to create and pledged to serve. The Force is not without a sense of humor, I think. Since he swore himself to peace when he joined the Rebel Alliance, the galaxy has been inundated with unending war of a duration and scope unlike anything our grandfather ever presided over. Could our grandfather have even conceived of a war that could extinguish _trillions _of lives? That is what Luke presided over—the single most bloody conflict in galactic history by an order of magnitude. Whatever happens to us, I promise you that he will live in the memory of history not as the one who stopped the Empire but as one of the people who botched the defense against the Yuuzhan Vong so utterly that galactic civilization very nearly died out as a consequence.

"My mother shares in that blame and that fate, too. Always a ruler before she was a Jedi, always so fundamentally at cross purposes with herself. A house so divided could never stand; as a Jedi she has amounted to very little, and as a politician she has amounted to even less. That is a lesson for us to mind as we gather power: as Sith and as leaders, we can work towards one and the same goal. Those capacities feed each other in us rather than consume themselves as they did for her.

"You know, I never told you that I saw my little brother, probably the bravest, truest Jedi I've ever known, butchered by Yuuzhan Vong warriors in a stinking pit aboard a worldship that was hell itself. There was so much greatness in him. And look at what that greatness came to. He died for me—now a Sith Lord, more and more the very image of all that he ever fought against. He died for Tahiri, who I have turned against herself and against the Jedi into a slave, all by way of her memory of him. He died in the name of the order that I intend to see crumble, and for the friends that I intend to put down.

"My sister lets her responsibilities—to the order, to the Jedi, to the galaxy—molder while she tends to her boyfriends. She wastes her power, derelicts from her duty, lets attachment drive her life. Such potential, squandered on so profoundly little. She is as great of a tragedy as all the rest of them. She is just a tragedy of a different sort. She never awakened from her slumber. I know her. She never will. She fears all of this, all of what you and I are. The Jedi of old lived free from fear. She is the living embodiment of how lost they are, how stagnant, how far from the old ways that endured so long.

"And then we have the worst ones of all, Ben Skywalker and Jacen Solo. I know what they say of me: that I am blind to the lessons of history—as if I do not see that we all wear the same chains. They will say the same of you, when it is clear to all the path you have chosen. No, I understand our family history perfectly well, and I think you do too. We see that in a sense all Skywalker blood lives the same sad life." Caedus's eyes churned. "I understand that the Force lays our line low. I understand that we are a tragic dynasty—we do not find happy ends. I understand that we make the same mistakes over and over again. And I make them nonetheless.

"I also understand that this is right. We suffer to end suffering. We die so that others can live. We embrace darkness to end darkness in the galaxy. We err so that the rest will not stray from a golden path." Caedus smiled sadly. "You know this."

Ben opened his malarial eyes, nodded slowly. "Sacrifice."

"There are so many things I have to teach you, but in the end all roads return to sacrifice. It is the truth of the Sith, and the truth of the galaxy—and it has always been the truth of the Skywalker line. Every lost love, every life ended, every pain endured—for each thing we cut away, we gain something greater. You have seen that even in our blindness, our wrongness, we carry out an unseen will. I have wavered, Ben. I waited a long time at the door, wondering if I should turn back. All the time, all of the time, dreading what would happen at the slightest misstep, wondering if I could dare to become Darth Caedus. But when I took you, that was the point of no return. And when you changed, I committed both of us. We will see this through. We will die seeing it through, sooner or later.

"For how terrible it often is, the Force can also be very beautiful. We serve a cosmic will; suppose that the Force, by definition, does not blunder. If we were mistaken, and the Force favors the Jedi, the Confederacy, then we will have sacrificed our lives to make them stronger. Maybe, bit by bit, the suffering of our era will pass. Maybe we will unite them all in confederation against us, and in dying bind worlds and souls to the way we wanted to create all along. It won't be much of a gift for my daughter. She would probably hate me for it. But if I'm wrong, it's now the only thing I have left to give her. But if we are _right_, if we can finally put an end the old ways, demonstrating their falsehood, exorcising their shadows from galactic government, then our sacrifices will have saved trillions—and made a galaxy where my daughter can live free from unending war. We will have made a galaxy where no one must suffer like we have suffered."

"Yes," Ben said, and Caedus could feel rapture and agony blurring together inside of his apprentice. It hurt him, all sore and tender, to keep still, legs crossed in the posture of meditation. It hurt him to think when he so direly needed sleep. Still, he sat rail-straight. Still, his mind raced. "Yes," Ben said.

"Here is a lesson about our relationship: always think, 'What is he worth to me?'" Caedus looked predatory, wolf-like, "Because all this time I have been thinking the same thing about you. And when you think you have learned all I have to teach—when you think you can kill me and get away with it—it is your duty to sacrifice me, to take up my mantle. I will be watching you in turn, taking away things you come to love, laying waste to your weakness. If you fail to grow as I see fit, I will have to sacrifice you and I will find a stronger apprentice. Our way is primal, simple—maybe poetic. I won't give you this warning again."

Ben said nothing.

"I have taken many risks for your sake, apprentice. Even now, I risk your father's fury. I made certain that he believes I killed you—not to mention suspicions he might harbor about your mother—and when he finds out what I've done with you instead, I doubt he will make much of an effort to maintain his Jedi façade. I doubt he will do anything but strike me as hard and as fast as he can. It may be impossible for me to take him alone. At the beginning, in my naivete, I chose paths in the Force that could preclude that outcome. Suppose he comes, and soon. What then?"

Ben rolled his shoulders. "That's easy. We will simply have to kill him together," his apprentice said.

Caedus smiled broadly in response—he felt very, truly proud.

"We will certainly try. Together."

Ben's solemn face cracked open into a slow, broad smile, awful in intensity—for a moment it looked as if his widening eyes were already beginning to sparkle with the first embers of the gold that would overtake them, with the deep shadows of long sleep deprivation beneath, and the lips cracked, and the pallor of sickness kept festering just below fever pitch as the aftereffects of the Embrace burned within him. Still he smiled with dawning joy.

"I want to hear more," Ben Skywalker said.

—

Yes, his wife and son were dead. Yes, the rain was loud. It was all too loud. No, he didn't need to sleep—the Grand Master of the New Jedi Order needed no sleep. No, he needed no family. No government. No, not even an order. A Jedi Grandmaster needed the Force. He knew with certainty that it was his.

It was crackling around him, crackling because he willed it to crackle. It could not stop the rain, no. But it was the breath in his lungs, the blood in his veins, the will to live still beating inside of him—it was everything. Yes, the Force was a more powerful ally than a government. Than a family. Yes, he could give himself to it as it gave itself to him. He could end all of this. Yes. It was crackling around him and inside of him, and there were no more questions.

His nephew had no idea. He had failed in ways he could not understand. He had sinned in ways he could not understand. He had no idea how he would pay. Yes, he would pay a dear price. Dearer than any other. Skywalker blood knew how to pay the price. Yes, it was a high price. It would be paid. Yes. All debts would be paid.

Jacen Solo owed him a debt. He would pay it in agony.

Yes. That was right. The Force was all around him, crackling inside of him, and he was a font of rightness. Yes, he could be all the right in the galaxy. It was no great feat. It was merely admitting that the Force was all there was, and knowing that the Force was in him. And that the Force could trivially make manifest the one, single thing he wanted: the corpse of Jacen Solo.

The rain was very loud. It would not cease. He wanted it to cease. He wanted it all to cease.

Luke Skywalker drew deeply into the Force, and he knew he could make it cease.

Yes, that was right.

_Yes yes yes Yes. Only right Yes he was yes right Yes._


	7. Balance

**VI. BALANCE**

_The truth is balance, but the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie.  
Susan Sontag_

—

The darkness was lovely and deep, still and silent but for Balance, which whispered to her about a future of victory upon victory. Alema Rar had found her way onto his flagship, and hidden in an empty missile tube, and now she waited for her opportunity. She shivered in the cold even as she felt him burning in the Force—the polished durasteel was a hard pillow, but she nonetheless waited in comfort, unable to contain her joy at knowing that Balance made manifest was close at hand.

Jacen Solo was close at hand. He was the dark heart beating in the balance, and now she could feel her profound kinship to him. He was song, right and so beautifully wrong. Yes, she served the Balance, which brought beings low and lifted them up in equal measure. Yes, and what embodied balance better than Jacen Solo?

Yes, she would follow him to the end of the galaxy. He would take her to the ruination of everyone who had wronged her.

_Thunk, thunk._

The proximity of the sound forced her out of her reverie—she lurched up and banged her head against the low top of the missile tube, which caused her to roil, cursing silently.

"Alema, I know you're in there. Give me one good reason not to give the order to have that missile tube exposed to vacuum." His voice was somehow unmuffled by the durasteel blast door between them—she belatedly realized he was using the Force to speak directly into her mind. She then belatedly realized that not only had he taken her completely by surprise, he also had her completely trapped. Her mind raced.

"One reason," Jacen Solo repeated. "I'm not going to wait very long to get it."

"Your daughter," whispered Alema Rar, knowing she would regret it. She regretted it.

"If you value your pathetic life, you will leave her out of whatever you're planning in your broken mind." He was thundering inside of her, drowning out the whisper of the Balance, as he brought her head back up into the ceiling of the tube with a sickening _clang_, held it there, his Force grip around her neck, and she was completely submerged within her own ecstasy and fear. "If you as much as think about harming her again, so help me but I will end you." Her head fell back to the rounded bottom of the tube unceremoniously, clanging once more.

"We have reasons for visiting you. We have important news," she gasped, blinking through the bright spots that had clouded over the blackness.

"Oh? Are you sure? Not blackmail? Or more extremely ill-advised threats?"

"No. No—news. Believe us. Please. We beg you. We want to help you. We just want you to listen. Please, Jacen Solo."

The hatch cracked open, hissing as the pressure equalized, letting light flood into the tube, and when she had clambered out, her head still ringing, Jacen Solo stood before her. He gazed at her humorlessly. Her heart leaped—he was tall and handsome as he had been before, looming black in the antiseptic white of the gunnery deck. He looked unhealthy, paler now, thinner, somehow colder—so much decayed, and so much greater for it. She remembered when he had been a boy. He had been happy, then. His eyes were shadowed, deep ashen bags underneath, but she could see flickers of bronze within like embers. He was magnificent, a true warrior for the cause of balance.

"For your sake, Alema, this had better be good."

She smiled as the guards bound her, as Jacen Solo turned and walked away.

—

"You have exposed me to a great deal of risk by coming here again, Alema Rar, without notice no less. I do not appreciate it. What if Jedi have followed you here? Any association they ferret out between the two of us could have catastrophic consequences. Perhaps you no longer prioritize self-preservation, but I have to keep it foremost in my mind for the time being. I have too much to do to let you get me killed or incapacitated with your fumbling."

"We have taken the utmost care—all this time we had been letting them follow us. If you let us go, we'll be back where they think we are before they even know we were gone. We know how to slip their watch. A rancor could evade your sister if she were trying to hunt it together with her harem."

Caedus was growing tired of Alema Rar. As useful as she had proven to be over Kashyyyk, as a general rule he did not like relying on beings who he could not consistently predict. Alema was full of surprises, too much so, and for a moment he pondered the difficulty of killing her before she left the ship. He was confident he could do it, probably without so much as a scratch, provided he could take her by surprise or at least fight her in a place of his own choosing, on his own terms. Her only real advantages were her unpredictability and her knowledge of Allana.

His own terms—that was the advantage the would-be assassin of Allana over Hapes and Mara Jade had taken away from him. They had chosen the battlefield, and in both cases it had limited his ability to bring his full power to bear. He would take care not to let that happen again.

But even so, there were too many contingencies. Although he was reasonably confident she hadn't been stowing away aboard the ship for long, sabotage did not require a large time commitment—he only needed to look back on Luke Skywalker's last visit to see that. His understanding of how Alema hid within the Force was not as complete as he might have preferred. If she had been aboard for a significant amount of time, she might even know about the great secret the _Anakin Solo _concealed: his apprentice. And in spite of a significant investment of GAG resources he still had no idea what, if indeed any, mechanism she had put in place to reveal Allana's parentage in the case of her own death. Alema Rar presented altogether too many questions, and he had altogether too few adequate answers. She would have to live, at least until he could claim them.

Alema was staring at him raptly as they walked, blind to the heavily armed and armored GAG shock troopers that flanked her, watching uneasily. They had taken her lightsaber, but he knew very well how dangerous Alema could be, lightsaber or no.

They reached his office, and he dismissed the guards with a gesture that meant 'wait outside, enter and terminate with extreme prejudice at the first sign of trouble', and he undid the binds on Alema's hands. He turned as if to head towards his desk, followed the turn into a spin, and came about facing her once more, pressing her tightly against the wall as his vibroblade pressed gently against her throat. He didn't look angry, or happy. He just looked cold.

Alema was still smiling, watching him wide-eyed. "How forward of you, Jacen Solo. Are you going to kill us?"

"I am tempted," he replied, eyes shining.

"But why would you kill your own servant?"

Caedus watched her. "You are no servant of mine, Alema. A servant would not use the safety of her master's daughter as a bargaining chip."

"But who fought Luke and Mara Skywalker for you? Who saved you over Kashyyyk?"

"And who even now threatens to bring my own daughter's existence to bear against me?"

"Who is at this moment carrying the burden of blame for Mara Jade's murder?"

Caedus's gaze flickered into anger for just a moment, then he stared into her, and his gaze could have cut for its intensity. When he spoke, his voice was very quiet, precisely measured. He was as calm as he could force himself to be. Still, the knife twitched against her throat.

"What, exactly, are you suggesting, Alema?"

"You know very well what we suggest. Better than we do, we think. That is a theory of ours—and it is a theory we have not spoken to a soul. We have hidden this theory, which could ruin you."

"Understand that if you have voiced this to anyone, anyone whatsoever—"

"If the Jedi knew it, do you think they would be anywhere but here, trying to kill you?" Her eyes darkened. "If the New Sith knew it, do you think that it wouldn't be leaked to every holonews outlet in the galaxy by now?"

Caedus edged off of the verge of panic. He was now merely extremely wary. "And you have come here to serve me."

She nodded.

"We serve Balance. You are Balance. We serve you."

He sighed.

"What exactly are you on about, Alema? Since you serve me, tell me. What is balance, exactly?"

She seemed startled by the question. Jacen guessed that among those lucky few who had survived encounters with Alema Rar, none were interested in hearing her side of the story, much less getting her life philosophy. An idea was taking shape. She started slowly, with the difficulty of someone giving voice to an idea one is intimately familiar with, but has never had to put to spoken word.

"Let us—allow us, permit us, to try and explain it as we see it. You see—Jacen Solo, through your actions, it has become clear to us that it has fallen to you, by way of poetic justice, to ruin everything we hate. You will bring about what is right. You will _ruin _all of them. It's balance. You see, balance—all the things that were done to me—you will ruin them—and then accounts will be even."

"Oh? And who will I ruin, Alema? The Jedi?"

She ran a hand absently down her mangled leg, down the stump of her lek, around the long branching white scars that marked her body. Her voice was husky, halting—she struggled with each word. "You will _break them_. You will _ruin them_. You will _destroy _what destroyed me. Us. Us. Listen—we didn't want to tell you until we were certain that you would listen, Jacen Solo—we wanted to reveal it to you and please you, never to make you hate us—we have destroyed the holopads that were going to be sent to the galactic media containing your daughter's identity in the case of our death. They are ash. We are the only living record, and we are entirely in your hands. We—we want only to serve you."

"I see," Darth Caedus said. He decided to believe her—tentatively. He considered killing her, there and then. It was profoundly tempting, but more tempting still was the possibility of extracting some use from her for all the grief she had caused him in the past. He let the knife fall from her throat, nodding slowly. She fell when he did, like that had been all that was holding her up, collapsing and curling into the fetal position, her hand still tracing her wounds. "Yes, Alema. You've done well to come to me. Of course I will destroy them. _We _will destroy them. How foolish, for us to be at odds with each other all this time—we have had the same ends in mind. What has developed between us is something inevitable, and fated, and in accord with the balance inherent in the universe." She looked up at him, and tears ran down her face. She looked up at him, and although Darth Caedus did not know the broken ways of her mind, he believed that somehow he had become the nexus of every hope and goal she still held within her.

If that was the case—if she was truly committed—then she still had use to him. She might prove valuable indeed. She was broken, but Darth Caedus had found great use in broken things.

"Yes, Alema, we are going to change everything. You don't have to fight alone, any more. We're going to work together, until there's balance. You can tell me everything."

She was remembering her long road, the sleet-white pain of lightsaber wounds, the sensation of teeth tearing into her. She was remembering the Nest, the Jedi, the ryll dens, all the old homes that had been ripped away from her, like so many parts of her body and her mind, like her sister. She was remembering the Jacen Solo she had known, and beholding the man who stood before her, and she believed he could make everything right. All that had come before had been so clumsy, so much groping in the darkness. Now her work could really begin. Balance was so much closer than it had ever been.

She nodded, pulled simultaneously between the need to sob and the need to laugh. Through it she was whispering to herself ceaselessly, with a joy she did not fully comprehend.

"Yes yes yes yes yes yes."


	8. Forge

**VII. FORGE**

_We forge the chains we wear in life.  
Charles Dickens_

—

The days turned into weeks, and the pain became lovelier. The boy who had been Ben Skywalker learned how to endure and create immense amounts of agony, and it was everything he had dared to hope it would be.

_You are making your way through the land of the dead, and I guard the gate. Only when you have made yourself master over death will I open the way._

Yes, his master had taken the Force away, had cast him into the darkness. Yes, he was clawing his way back towards life, inexorably crawling towards the power that his master had promised, crawling towards the galaxy that he wanted to build.

Yes, he was becoming stronger. His master was right—the Force could be a crutch. Without the ability to rely on it, he fought harder than he had in his entire life, became fitter, physically and mentally more agile than he could have ever imagined in the weakness of his days as Jedi.

_I intend to make you a master of everything. I intend to make you a killer, an assassin, a general—a leader, a ruler, a thinker._

His master taught him many things. He learned the lore, legends, philosophies of a dozen Force-using groups, including the Sith. He became an expert fighter with a vibroblade, a deadly accurate marksman with the entire standard Galactic Alliance arsenal of blaster pistols and rifles, skilled in the use of blow darts and the fine distinctions among the multitude poisons they could contain. His GAG education in infiltration, assassination, sabotage, demolition, and interrogation—already solid—expanded rapidly. His master gave him rapid crash-courses in diplomacy, fleet theory, galactic history, law, government, manual hyperspace triangulation calculations. He spent most of the long hours secluded in his cabin reading and reading until his eyes began to sting, and then he read more. He learned a dozen pressure points on a dozen different species that could incapacitate or kill. He learned how to lie and be believed. He learned how to make an entire Galactic Senate his puppet.

Even without the Force, he was being shaped into a one man army.

But his master's teaching was more than this. Slowly, he learned how to think like his master, how to approach each situation with a careful, cold estimation of each individual factor. People, ideas, words—they were all tools to be used to construct victory. He began to understand how his master had seen the wisdom in Sith teachings, how his master had killed Mara Jade Skywalker, how his master had managed to bring Ben Skywalker into the fold.

He was not appalled, not disgusted or shocked. He was fascinated. His master had laid the galaxy bare, exposed the clockwork ticking behind the blackness of the void, and examined every piece as an asset to be used or a threat to be either neutralized or excised outright. His master had seen the potential in Ben Skywalker, chosen to make it bloom—provided fertile soil, trimmed the branches that would hinder growth, exposed it to the light that would make him flourish. His master had seen the damage Mara Jade Skywalker could cause, and had chosen to end her.

Darth Caedus was teaching him how to forge a greater galaxy. The scale of the vision, the audacity, the daring—how terribly he wanted to take it all inside of himself and make all things mutable, to be shaped as he saw fit.

_You must be able to turn fact into falsehood, and falsehood into fact. You must be prepared for all contingencies. You must understand how to lead a galaxy, how to kill anyone, how to survive anything._

_You must understand that we are gardeners, and that everything that stands in our way is a weed._

_Do you understand, yet, that everything I tell you is a lie?_

—

"Yes," Alema gasped. "Yes." Caedus stood over her, and she spoke to him.

"We spent a very long time coming to understand Balance. It came first with the sensation of teeth piercing us—the knowledge that for our suffering the ones who caused our suffering must suffer too. That was only right, only fair as teeth chewed us and lightsabers mangled us and we were lost to light—that the galaxy could not continue to be if there was no retribution.

"We spent a long time alone in the darkness, a long time knowing that we were so much less than what we once were, and that we could never be restored again. It was a long time with only the promise of Balance to sustain us, to give us the strength to live.

"We know now. We see. We misunderstood the balance, did not see the absolute beauty that is of it and in it. We underestimated justice. It will not fall to us to strike the blow. No, that would not be beautiful enough for Balance, not fair enough.

"We did not see that it would be so much worse for them than we conceived, in the pain and dark—how utterly perfect it would be that the blood of those who wronged us would rise up to curse them. We did not understand how truly Balance cherishes blood—how the Balance will bring Skywalker blood full circle, how the Balance can make poetry of their ruination, how the Balance can make our revenge a song singing forever in the void. We did not understand at first that our blood could not bring Balance into being, but that we were to serve it.

"Yes," Alema said. "We did not understand that it is you who must destroy them, and that it is you we must serve. We did not understand that you are more than merely our own revenge—you are the revenge of the Empire, the revenge of the Vong, the revenge of the Nest, the revenge of the Sith—you can be the revenge of everything Jedi have ruined. You can be the revenge of everything they have broken beyond repair. And—and—what you make rise up from the ashes—it will be better. We believe that it will be better. We believe in you, above all things.

"We will do as you ask. And all we ask in return is that you cudgel them to death with their own history. That you make a rope of their accumulated error and strangle them with it. You have already done a great deal for us, more than any other, only in becoming what you now are."

She watched her master with unblinking eyes. They were silent for a long moment. When she spoke again, it was calm, but Jacen Solo could feel her anticipation in the Force. He knew that Alema Rar, too, recognized that a vital moment drew near. She moved to kneel, hobbled but proud.

"We feel that you are more than just Jacen Solo. You are the Dark Lord of the Sith. What is your name, master?"

"I am Darth Caedus."

The sound resonated unnaturally in the office, resonated with an immense, looming weight. It was a lovely sound.

Alema Rar's eyes glittered as she rose. It was a lovely sound, a slicing sound, all old things being severed, the Balance flourishing beyond beauty, entering realms of wholeness she could not comprehend but knew were singing beyond song, shaking the galaxy down to its blinding white core, purifying until the stars shone brighter than stars, brighter than brightness itself, healing down to the broken woman who had found the epicenter, the vibration that would reshape the galaxy, make it all hum the sound of _Caedus_.

She began to cry, crying for love of the galaxy, crying for her sudden realization that the galaxy could love her in return. She fell into her master's arms, and he caught her, held her still as she sobbed into his chest. She cried for all the love she had lost, and the love she had found, and the love that would come to be.

The door to the office slid open, and the boy who had been Ben Skywalker took a step forward, then stopped dead in his tracks. He stared first at Alema Rar, then at his master, then back again. Then he drew his blaster, and aimed it squarely at Alema's head.

"That will not be necessary," said Darth Caedus, holding up a gloved hand, even as he comforted Alema with the other. "Alema is here at my pleasure."

Alema divorced herself from her master's chest, turned to look at Luke Skywalker's son as if she were seeing a phantom. Even she knew that Luke Skywalker himself believed his son to be dead at Jacen's—Caedus's—hand. Ben stared at her in cold return, dubious. She looked up at her master in confusion, just beginning to bloom into joy.

Cudgel them to death with their own history, indeed.

"This is my apprentice," he said to her.

"No," she replied, her eyes widening as the astounding significance of those four words fully occurred to her. Already, Jacen Solo was so much more than she had ever dared hope. How she _loved _him in that dawning moment; how ready she was to follow him to the end. How she loved the abiding Balance that was in him and of him. "But—"

"Alema Rar," Darth Caedus whispered, a gloved finger silencing her, bringing her eyes up to meet his. "Do you understand, yet, that everything I tell you is the truth?


	9. Thunder

**VIII. THUNDER**

_If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.  
Frederick Douglass_

—

Darth Caedus stepped out of the cool darkness of the Senate building and into a roaring sea of souls, under a taciturn sky. He was smiling as he made his way towards his waiting shuttle, all poise and power, through a parted ocean of the citizenry that adored him, flanked by the holopress that fawned over his every moment on this world.

Even in the darkest times—and these were surely dark times—he was reminded that Coruscant still loved him, and would love him more.

Many wheels were in motion, on this world and elsewhere. In spite of the trials of the last few months, Darth Caedus yet lived and yet moved pieces on the galactic Dejarik board.

His greatest asset on that board was readily apparent: he had found his apprentice at last, one who learned voraciously, one who had immense potential to realize that learning. In Ben Caedus had a student who had broken past the boundaries of light and dark, a student who swam in the most terrible pain. He had a student that reminded him of himself in so many ways—a student who could learn the entire truth, a partner from whom he need keep no secrets. He knew he was following in the footsteps of his teachers—he knew now what it must have felt like for Vergere, for Lumiya, when they took a student, broke him, and reassembled him into something greater. He knew more and more fully now than ever before how it felt to be a teacher, and a student, and an ever greater gardener.

He had a servant, too, and broken though she surely was, she was also highly useful. Fanatics could always be useful, if manipulated correctly. To Alema he was more than a man, or even a Sith Lord, but an instrument of infallible, divine punishment, and thus far she had followed his every order to the letter. She was not certainly not incompetent, and in truth she was not nearly so mad as she had led the Jedi to believe. As far as they were concerned she was naturally still at large, the most likely suspect in the murder of Mara Jade Skywalker, and she was most valuable to him at this juncture continuing to lead the Jedi on a fruitless, distracting chase across the galaxy—all the while waylaying and sabotaging and assassinating at his behest. This she did without complaint, nodding as if it were the most natural thing when he had explained that should she be captured, she should confess her murder of Mara Jade Skywalker and promptly devise a means to end her own life.

There was also the issue of the New Sith Order Alema had encountered on Korriban—but for now they would have to wait. After all, for the moment Caedus was still proving to be a valuable distraction for them as they conducted their mysterious work in the shadows, undisturbed. That estimation would surely change quickly, though, if Caedus could make it through the immediate gauntlet of challenges surrounding him. When he became more threat than tool he was certain the New Sith would act against him. Darth Caedus was a Baneite, and he was not at all pleased with their heretical Rule of One—once he was capable of exerting his power more directly, he had every intention of smothering the Order growing on Korriban in its cradle. Or, better yet, he had every intention of making his apprentice smother them.

Though he was hesitant to overestimate his advantage, it was becoming increasingly clear that the war was beginning to turn in his favor once more. The Galactic Alliance had suffered several improbable, ill-timed setbacks since the outset, but the constant no-tolerance campaign on secession that consumed most of his waking time and effort of late was at last beginning to wear the Confederacy down. Without the constant supply of ships and materiel trickling into Confederate fleets from newly seceded worlds, cracks had begun to show in their leadership, and clever though Turr Phennir was, he was surely aware that his advantage was slipping—what few worlds had defected from the Alliance of late had limped across the line, battered and bleeding, often in need of more aid from their new Confederate allies than they could offer. Though this position was far from perfect or even preferable, in the final estimation Caedus still controlled the majority of the galaxy's centers of finance and culture, most of the vital shipyards and mining facilities, and recent legislation passed in the Senate gave him improved control over those resources. Surgical strikes chipped away at already-strained Confederate supply lines daily—not to mention that they provided an excellent classroom for Ben—and though he played this fact close to his chest, it was true that some of the worlds pressed hardest by onerous Confederate demands for troops, ships, and supplies had quietly contacted him to test the waters about rejoining the Alliance in earnest.

The art of diplomacy and politicking had come to him rather naturally in the last few months, and his faculty for winning hearts and minds was honestly proving more valuable than any Sith trick had ever been. There was more reliable and profound magic in his political identity—his approval ratings in the core remained high and steady in spite of a vicious, protracted war that had long wavered on the edge of quagmire, in spite of the restrictions on individual freedom Confederate terrorism had prompted, in spite of the coup that had propped him up as co-Chief of State without a single vote cast. He was backed by an unbreakable majority in the Senate, and within that majority he could exert fine control over the dozen or so most influential representatives through intense mental conditioning he had applied using the Force. Likewise, his carefully cultivated image had found fertile soil in the general public—to them, he was the one leader who would sacrifice his family's love and his status in the Jedi Order for their cause. He was the one figure in the government of the Galactic Alliance who was visible to them on the front lines of every battle, day by day, fighting relentlessly.

More precarious was his position within the Galactic Alliance Navy. Though the servicemen of the Galactic Alliance Guard were hand-picked for total loyalty to him, and though he had strong support among the rank and file, far too many high ranking officers were members of the old guard—friends of Luke Skywalker and the Jedi who hardly hid their wavering allegiance to him. In due time they would have to be dealt with—the very last thing Caedus needed now was an attempted counter-coup. At least his dear partner Admiral Niathal had been toeing the line. After Kashyyyk, he had taken her aside and explained to her in no uncertain terms that if she ever tried to play politics with Galactic Alliance fleets again, in any way hindering the operations that were key to throttling the growth of the Confederacy, he would see her brought up on charges of treason. He had also chosen to reveal Ben to her—and that he was in sole possession of such an ace in hole had thrown her off balance. This had helped—whether she was convinced or not, she was at least wary enough to give him breathing room to press the Alliance advantage without having fleets pulled out from beneath him. Given time and opportunity she would attempt to stab him in the back once again, he knew, but he did not intend to provide her with either. By the time she made her next move he would either be dead already or in a position to end her, and the rest of the disloyal would follow.

Still, in spite of several reasons for cautious optimism, there was a great storm on the horizon. His current position was finally untenable even in the short term.

The loss of Hapan support was the intractable problem at the heart of the Galactic Alliance's war strategy. For all the momentum he could deny the Confederacy, miserable and hungry as he could surely make them, he still had no means of bringing the war to a decisive close as things stood. The loss of Hapes decreased the manpower of the Alliance significantly at just the moment when it needed every soldier and ship it could get—he was on the cusp of turning the tide, and if he could just return Hapes to the Galactic Alliance camp, that would be enough. This was not to mention the aching pain that accompanied even the thought of that black moment when she had broken with him and left him alone with the pain and his duty in the night. He preferred not to dwell on it. Something had to be done—if the Hapans rejoined the Alliance, he could make out the vague shape of a plan of attack that could bring the war to quick, clean close. If he knew his wife and daughter loved him, understood his sacrifices, supported him in this, then he would have the strength to go on fighting, to move from the menial concerns of the war to the grander concern that underpinned all Darth Caedus did, which was making a new order where his wife and his daughter might be safe. To win this battle he needed Hapes back on the board—but of late he also wondered if he could win the larger war without the counsel of the woman he loved. If he could reach out in the night and feel Tenel Ka's presence, not shrinking away but meeting his own—to understand him, to hear him, to see the order deep within what he had done for her and not merely the blood and madness of its face—how devoutly he wished for it—then maybe he could at last fall into a deep and dreamless sleep again.

Even more immediately, Ben could not stay Force-blind for much longer, devouring as he did the lessons Caedus prepared. His apprentice's education required that he be reintroduced to the Force, immersed in it once more—and that meant Luke Skywalker would sense that his son yet lived. And that would mean a confrontation—a very imminent and very deadly one. Caedus had long since learned that underestimating his uncle was the most fatal error he could make.

Worse, Caedus did not even know if he could possibly kill Luke Skywalker. He remembered his visions, blurred by expanses of time and space, the sheer distance of the threads of fate he understood now from the threads he had understood then—he remembered the day Lumiya had revealed herself to him, remembered how he had chosen among all his possible futures the only path where his uncle would not die by his hand.

Luke Skywalker was no Dejarik piece—he didn't play by those rules. He was a lightsaber that could reduce the board to molten slag and the player to a cold corpse, and even now that blade was coming down.

But Darth Caedus did not fight alone, he reminded himself. For all the death and all the war and all the sacrifice, Darth Caedus now had a partner.

Darth Caedus smiled once more as his shuttle ascended, as he watched the gleaming towers of Coruscant meld into a larger tapestry of patterned light.

Yes, of course.

Where there was a will, there was a way.

—

Yes, Jacen would suffer. And yes, he could be found. The Force could always find Skywalker blood churning, yes, at the heart of any firestorm. Yes, his nephew could hide within his black coward ship made of steel and lies, but that was no matter. The Force dealt in blood—steel and lies yielded to superior laws.

In the end, all things traced back to blood. Bloodlines ran red down the stone face of the ages—blood that had made them choose, blood that would make them rise and blood that would make them fall and die. Blood that they spilled, blood that would be spilled in turn until the whole galaxy was stained.

Yes, that was fair. The blood of his wife and son had been red. Jacen Solo's blood would be red. He could have asked for much more, but in truth all he wanted was to suffer Jacen Solo no longer. Let all the rest continue in their cycle of destruction down into eternity, if only he could claim Jacen's head for his own. That was only fair, in terms of all he had invested and all he had been given in return.

Luke Skywalker reached out, reached out into the Force that was his, scoured it and found his nephew, pinpointed him even as he hid, exposed him like a worm to the light, enjoyed imagining and feeling how he squirmed in helplessness.

"Where are you going, Master Skywalker?" someone asked.

"Taking out a Stealth-X. I feel like going flying. Like I used to. I'll be back."

"Are you sure you're alright, Luke? Luke?"

"Well," Luke said, climbing into the cockpit, "Goodbye."

No, they would not understand. His Jedi could not know his mission, or why he had to undertake it alone. Still, it had to be undertaken. He would be back soon, and he would make sense of it then.

But first, Luke Skywalker intended to drown Jacen Solo in the red.


	10. Pain

**IX. PAIN**

_Who, except the gods, can live time through forever without any pain?  
Aeschylus_

—

Darth Caedus felt his uncle looming, an immense incoming wall of pressure in the Force, unlike any other, and he now knew well that a Jedi Grandmaster pushed to his very limit was a terrifying thing. Caedus was afraid in spite of himself, uneasy in spite of long and careful planning, nervous in spite of the intense meditation that had given glimpses of what was to come—all his advantages were minute, given his foe. His stomach churned and churned.

When it came to Luke Skywalker, history abundantly demonstrated that plans and visions were not enough. The future was cloudy, now, churning before the storm—the threads of possibility fraying as he attempted to grasp them, dividing and dividing, and he could not catch a glimpse who would walk away from the encounter to come.

The moment that would tip the galactic scale drew near, and he felt blind without his gateway into potentiality, weak before the assault that loomed, the blade that was falling towards him.

He took a deep breath, and then another, drawing deeply into the Force. He had to survive this. Too much depended on his survival. His apprentice needed him. His wife and daughter needed him. The galaxy needed him. Some of them had just failed to realize it yet.

The galaxy did not need Luke Skywalker, who could not forge a peace. It did not need Luke Skywalker, who could not forge a family, or an Order, or a government.

He breathed in deeply once more, felt his pounding heart slow again. Vergere had taught him to survive. Vergere had taught him to eat the pain. Vergere had taught him that it was his duty to kill weeds.

Had she seen, truly seen, what he would become? Had she known how much he would have to sacrifice? How much had she concealed behind those alien features, within her labyrinthine teachings?

_I am Vergere. What are you?_

There were too many questions—these were things he had long since given up pondering. Vergere was dead, ashes in a world of ashes, and he remained, at least for the moment.

He unclipped his newly built lightsaber from his belt, observed it in the dimmed light of his office. Caedus ignited it, let the burning, blood red wash over him. It was comforting, somehow—familiar. He knew with grave certainty that he would truly inaugurate his new blade that day. It would taste of Jedi for the first time.

He felt very tired. Of all the things to suffer on top of his many sufferings, on the eve of the most pivotal fight of his life—insomnia. He felt terribly aware of the burden of his sacrifices, aware of all the love he had cast away, aware of all of the lives he had destroyed—all to bring him to this office, all to force him to the cusp of the threshold, here, preparing for his final duel with Luke Skywalker, one way or another. He wished that Tenel Ka were here, and that he could have words to explain everything to her, that he could ask for her counsel, and ask her about their daughter, but he wished only for a moment—he resolved those wishes into certainty. He would live to see both of them again. At that moment, and indeed most moments, he wanted nothing so dearly.

He closed his eyes for a moment, and he was far away from the _Anakin Solo_, back on Yavin IV, sparring with his first teacher.

_The clash, the hiss, the hum—Jacen struck, and Luke barely moved, demolishing the offense, catching each attack and turning it against the attacker until finally Jacen gave up in frustration._

_He scowled. "Uncle Luke, why won't you attack, press your advantage?"_

_Luke smiled wryly. "Because I am a Jedi, and Jedi don't attack the defenseless."_

"_I'm far from defenseless, Master."_

"_Oh? Are you? Show me." Jacen struck fast, but Luke caught it on the tip of his blade, parried it smoothly. Jacen thumbed off his blade, stood with his arms crossed._

"_I know this lesson. You'll make me madder and madder, and I'll make more and more mistakes, and I'll quit, and in the end you'll never have to attack at all."_

"_Very good," Luke said. "You'll know you're master over your opponent when you can beat him without even landing a blow."_

Darth Caedus rubbed his tired eyes, and felt ready, in spite of it all. The Force always moved in cycles.

—

"_Wake up, farmboy."_

Yes, he woke, sharply aware, watching the smooth shapes of hyperspace flowing. Mara spoke to him now, or he thought she did, spoke through the hole in his mind where their bond had used to be.

He watched it, steeling himself, meditating like he had never meditated before, like even that could tear through boundaries—he felt himself reaching down into the core of the Force, deeper and truer than he ever had before. There was power there, more than enough to squash an insect. And when the stars resolved themselves he caught sight of the _Anakin Solo_'s underbelly, saw it laid bare like a black arrowhead amidst an infinite sprawl of glittering gems.

It was beautiful. It was time to execute Jacen Solo.

"_End him, farmboy,"_his wife said somewhere.

"Yes," Luke said. "There is a time for ending."

—

Caedus watched as the Stealth-X landed in the private hangar. He could have attempted to have his uncle shot down, he could have brought a cadre of GAG shock troopers to fight with him—he could have let Luke land and then vented the hangar's atmosphere, but all that would have done no good. He just _knew_.

The Force insisted that some battles be fought face to face, one on one.

Well, Caedus mused, perhaps that was a bit of a misnomer.

Luke's X-Wing touched down effortlessly, and the Grandmaster himself jumped from the cockpit to the shining deck in a single leap. There was something feral and primal in his eyes, and that something immediately struck icy fear in Jacen's wary heart. Caedus adopted a predatory swagger as he approached his uncle nonetheless, let the insolence welling up inside of him surface in his face, voice, sneer.

He knew that this was tantamount to grabbing a rancor's tail.

"Master Skywalker," he said with a cold, narrow smile, "To what do I owe the pleasure? Well, I'm sure the tribunal will take into account the fact that you surrendered to me peacefully with the full intention of facing the charge of high treason."

Luke did not answer, but he smiled back. It was a vengeful, awful smile, wider and crueler than Jacen had ever seen from his uncle. It reminded him distinctly of the way Yuuzhan Vong warriors smiled.

"No more words. I am tired of them. Your words lie."

Luke Skywalker drew his emerald lightsaber, thumbed it to life in one smooth, natural motion born of long, long use.

"It is time for you to die, Jacen."

"No token attempt at redemption? You're being a bad Jedi, Uncle Luke."

"You'd say no."

The Dark Lord of the Sith grinned.

"True. But Luke, you can't kill Jacen. Jacen's already dead." The Force was humming with potential, energy coiling forth from both men. Now it was time to reveal his true nature to his worst enemy, time for the Dark Lord of the Sith to engage the Grandmaster of the Jedi Order. It was time for everything to change forever.

He said his name with pride.

"I am Darth Caedus."

Luke looked unsurprised.

"I've been killing Sith since before you were born. You'll die here."

Jacen shrugged. "Maybe so. I have prepared for that contingency. To tell you the truth, I don't fear it. I'm ready for a long rest, if that's what it must be. My work will outlive me. Can you really say the same?"

"No more words."

"But Luke, I killed your wife. Poisoned her. She was about to strike me down, but I distracted her for just a fraction of a second, projected your son's face over my own, jammed the dart in her thigh."

Luke was clenching and unclenching his free fist.

"No more words."

"I killed your son. He moved to strike, but I saw it coming, and I was faster. Don't doubt that I showed him mercy, Luke—one stroke, head off the shoulders—he felt nothing. A moment of fear, or anger, perhaps, and then—"

Luke Skywalker struck. He was across the hangar in an instant, darting forward as Caedus stepped back into fighting posture, igniting his lightsaber, and then the Grandmaster of the Jedi Order was upon him, striking and snarling. Caedus executed every blow, every parry, cleanly, carefully, with surgical precision, a matador's dance, all fluid and deliberate and economic motion, absent of waste—anything less and he would have been sliced apart in seconds. Time moved slowly as he twirled, blocked, stepped, giving each motion the precise measure necessary to carry him into the next. The future was once again open to him, completely and fully open, all in lock step, and he was watching each motion before it happened, watching each strike and step split the golden threads of possibility into infinities in the instant before they contracted into reality once more, all while beholding his uncle's fury—all framed within the clear and empty rage of Luke's cold pale blue eyes.

Caedus whirled out of the fray, spinning backwards as the vibroblade concealed in his sleeve fell into his free hand, glinting for an instant in the cold light of the hangar, the mirror-sheen of the floor, before it was within his grasp, and when Luke lunged forward to press his advantage, Caedus continued to spin, sliced smooth and deep across his uncle's chest in an instant, so fast that it took Luke a moment to realize that he had even been the first man bloodied.

Luke howled but did not stop for even a moment, attacked with redoubled rage—rage beyond rage, rage that was lost to time or space, lost to the workings of a rational mind. It was rage that could consume the galaxy, a rage that screamed, snarled, screeched—seeking only to end everything forever. Caedus let the fear roll into him and out again, leaving only power, and the twin certainties that it was his duty to kill weeds, and Luke Skywalker was a weed greater than any other.

The rhythm quickened, now, opened into symphony, and for a glorious moment Caedus remembered what he had felt the day he ended Onimi, felt as if he were the will of the galaxy ending his uncle, felt complete for the first time in a long time as each thrust gave to parry, each blow yielded to its counter, each step made a dance that was the galaxy's dance.

Luke's style was based on the sheer dominance of space, all acrobatic darting and leaping, primal and unspeakably deadly—he was everywhere all at once, and Caedus knew he had no hope of matching the incredible artistry of Luke's bladework tit for tat—so he grounded himself, made each motion with unbelievable care, spent his energy more cautiously and deliberately, always mindful of cost and benefit in each component of each strike. Ceaselessly precise, he picked at Luke's over-extension, bit with the knife, reclaimed utter control of the immediate space around him—pivoting sharply on a booted heel, summoning all of himself up and into the moment, but aware in advance of each act to come, playing several steps ahead of himself, blinking away what had become a hailstorm of prescient images based on angle of blade and foot.

It was because of this that Caedus knew that a strike he could not block was coming well before Luke darted past his guard, knew the next necessary stroke even as the green blade burned into his shoulder, beheld the pain even as he brought his own lightsaber up to prevent Luke from burning deeper, and pushed against the agony.

_Jacen Solo was watching his brother's death. Jacen Solo was in the Embrace again, hanging, eating the white. Jacen Solo was in the amphistaff grove, wrapped in them, his body made an instrument of cutting. Jacen Solo was on the Path of the Gods, sentencing a fellow Jedi to death. Jacen Solo was within the Well, longing to join Ganner in the dance._

_Darth Caedus was leaving his family behind. Darth Caedus was learning that he could not be there to see his daughter grow up. Darth Caedus was killing Nelani Dinn, knowing what he was becoming and still driving his blade deeper through her. Darth Caedus was staring into Mara Jade's dying eyes. Darth Caedus was being denied by the love of his life. Darth Caedus was reshaping Ben Skywalker like he himself had been reshaped. Darth Caedus was going to destroy the Jedi, and Darth Caedus was going to remake the galaxy._

Everything was pain, his history was a history of pain, and so he made the pain his strength. He took the pain and made it manifest, feeling his whole body burn as he turned the immense weight of it outwards, as he made his uncle understand what it was to sacrifice.

For her, he reminded himself. All of this for her. How he loved Allana. Whatever happened, he hoped that she would come to know that one fact. He would see her again, in this world or the next.

It was only a slight expression of his power to flip the X-Wing his uncle had arrived in entirely, wing over wing, with a terrible deafening metal screech and hailstorm of sparks that nearly crushed Luke, throwing him off balance.

Now the scales shifted, and Caedus mounted a new attack—he pushed forward, every motion offensive, every blow driving at his uncle, not at all hindered by his mangled shoulder—and now the lightning came easily, freely, booming and hissing and rolling off of Caedus, striking past Luke's emerald blade in cold blue arcs.

Now Darth Caedus understood. This battle was not going to be decided by Force mastery, or skill with a lightsaber, or who was right. The winner would be the one who knew pain best.

He was mounting the steps of his ascent, mounting with every strike that pushed his uncle backwards, mounting with every convulsion Luke Skywalker struggled to ignore, mounting with every slice of the knife that reached past Luke Skywalker's defenses, painting the Grandmaster in long lovely scarlet lines.

And every time Luke's blade singed his skin, every time a kick collided, every time he flexed his wounded shoulder, he grew stronger. The more the pain sang, the more he sang.

This was to be the beginning of his dance. He understood Ganner, now, understood what it was to dance with death and laugh. Ganner had repelled the Yuuzhan Vong, made the entrance to the Well of the World Brain his domain. Caedus was repelling through his uncle everything that threatened to ruin his galaxy, making this hangar bay his sovereign realm.

There was one difference, though, between Darth Caedus and Ganner Rhysode: Caedus had no intention of dying, not yet, not like vermin, not at the hands of some Jedi turned animal. It would take so much more than that to end this dance, and so many more would be sprawled and still at his feet before it ended.

He was more than a Jedi, more than a Sith, more than the dozen Force groups that had taught him—he was the galaxy, and the hand turning the galaxy, and the mind behind the hand turning the galaxy. He was the tempest, he was eternal—he was Yun-Yuuzhan, Lord of Pain, the gardener.

Luke Skywalker would be put to death for trespassing in the reality that now belonged to Darth Caedus.

—

The arrogance of it was astounding. The vanity, the hubris.

He saw it in Jacen Solo's golden eyes, saw it in the sneer on his nephew's face. How foolish he had ever been to try to counsel the boy, to save him from himself—there was nothing good left in Jacen Solo, nothing at all but exalting darkness. He could feel the kind of happiness, the kind of joy, radiating from Jacen, and he hated that most of all.

"_Kill him, farmboy. Kill him. Kill him." _Mara had been his strength, his solace—she was still. She had whispered to him in the long dark hours he had watched hyperspace flowing, whispered to him as he fell into exhausted sleep, promising that Jacen Solo would die.

Jacen Solo thought he understood pain, thought he could suffer and laugh and devour. How very wrong.

Luke Skywalker had forgotten more pain than Jacen Solo had ever known.

Now he felt his blood churning, felt it roaring.

Yes, you could be wise, and be patient, and do everything right, and your family could still be stolen away forever. You could love your nephew, and do everything in your power to help him and teach him, give him every advantage, only to watch him become a monster. You could fight for fifty years, only to lose everything you had built in months—in moments.

Luke Skywalker hated—hated this Star Destroyer, hated everything it stood for, hated this worn, bleeding body, hated the nephew that had brought him to this, hated the galaxy that had never given him the slightest solace.

"_Yes, hate him, yes. Hate can end him."_

The more he hated, the more it became clear that this was true. Slowly, he regained his defenses, began to regain momentum. Slowly, the lightning came, intercepting his nephew's until they were fighting within a shifting equilibrium of spectacular bursts of raining sparks, smoke that rose from both as their bodies burned. This time, he saw Jacen's knife coming, and he caught it by the blade, held it tight in his free hand, his natural hand, wrenched it from his nephew's grasp. He threw it, clattering, away.

"_Yes."_

Hate was everything he had imagined, hate could crush stars, hate could wipe a galaxy clean. All the boundaries had fallen away, and now anything was possible.

He reached deep, reached into the Force, hating it as he used it, and he slammed Darth Caedus into the deck with a single shove, shattering the massive counterforce his nephew had willed to prevent such a thing, smiling at the sound of Jacen's head colliding with the durasteel, and Luke held him there so tightly that Jacen could not breathe. For all the power Jacen pretended to, he was finally no match. He fixed more pressure on Caedus's hand, felt the bones within snap, watched his nephew's crimson lightsaber deactivate. He then moved to the arms, ribs, legs, slowly snapping each one, savoring the sensation of Jacen Solo breaking, bone by bone.

"_Yes."_

He wished for Jacen to scream, or beg for mercy, or beg for death, but there was only the hum of Luke's lightsaber and the just audible wet snaps of bone, even as the absolute excruciation bled out into the Force like white flame. Staring down at his nephew, who gazed past him with unfathomable golden eyes open wide and opening wider still, brighter and brighter, he took a deep breath. He lifted his blade into the air.

There was a time to love, and a time to hate. There was a time to build, and a time to break.

There was a time to begin, and a time to end.

"_Balance in all things."_

—

Caedus watched as Luke Skywalker lifted his storied blade high, angled it down towards the heart of the Sith. He felt very much at peace, and very much ready. At the zenith of his pain, as each fracture in each broken bone compounded, he felt most powerful, most prepared for what was to come. Darth Caedus knew that he had been foolish to ever think that he could kill Luke Skywalker. All the futures had run together into one vision, and now each moment was of his own careful making. This had been a long time coming.

"We loved you, Jacen," his uncle said.

Caedus watched the gaunt shape of his apprentice solidify behind Luke Skywalker as if he had been birthed complete from shadow, watched as he pressed close against his father's back in one rapid and fluid motion, light glinting around his hand. Luke felt it coming only in the last moment, when he was already committed, caught wrong-footed for a vital instant as the shape of Luke and the shape of his son came together.

The knife went in all the way to the hilt. Luke cried out, beginning a furious spin, then halted all motion suddenly with a gasp as the tip went through his lung, the all-consuming neural shock of that instant forcing him to involuntarily drop his lightsaber. Luke could no longer will his legs to obey his mind, and so he fell, but Ben held on, going down with him. Luke writhed in pain, trying to marshal the Force, and Ben tore the knife out, his eyes on the streaked red shining on the razor-sharp durasteel. He brought it up again, high above his head, brutally quick, and then stabbed down.

The broken bones in Caedus were singing, and so was his tired flesh, and the durasteel deck, and the knife, and every star that waited for him beyond the magcon field. The knife came up, then down, and a great shatterpoint broke.

Darth Caedus returned his apprentice to the Force, baptized him at the shore of a roaring sea of light and darkness.

"Ben Skywalker, Sith in making: I want you to feel your father die."

The knife came up again, and down. Luke made a soft gurgling sound.

"Look at his face. Look at how tired he was. Look at how lost he became."

Ben turned his father, looked into his eyes. Luke opened his mouth to speak, but only a shallow groan emerged. Empty of rage, empty of hope, he sobbed, a choking sob, and pressed his bloody, shaking hand against his son's pounding heart.

"You return to the land of the living, and he goes down, into the land of the dead."

Ben brought the knife down again—a motion of the whole body, legs to arms, as he had been taught—stabbed deep and hard into his father's chest, piercing though bone, stabbed again and again.

"No doubt remains. We are the masters of pain. We are Sith, and more than Sith. We are gardeners."

Caedus felt Luke Skywalker die, felt his consciousness fade from horror into silence beneath the blade. But Ben stabbed still, stabbed with a relentless fury, again and again. Wielding it with only instinct as a guide, lightning erupted uncontrollably around him, became a storm of ion blue that engulfed him, that crackled and hissed, thundering every time the knife came down.

"For every love we cut away, we grow stronger. For every love we lose, we make something greater."

Ben's pale face was marked with streaks of red as he stabbed for an eternity, stabbed as if it were all he knew, stabbed until he was too exhausted to break the skin with his thrusts.

Luke Skywalker's glazed eyes seemed to be fixed on something beyond son, beyond his nephew—far beyond the knife that glittered in Ben Skywalker's hand. He seemed to Caedus to have his unblinking and unspeakably aged features fixed on the void, forever. He looked truly ancient in death, withered by too many years spent fighting for too little victory.

Ben finally stood on unsteady legs and circled the scene of his crime. He could not look away from his father, his focus still moving from Luke's empty gaze to his butchered chest and back again, as if Ben still could not believe that he was finally and truly dead. The yawning chasm of terror and opportunity that had cracked open and swallowed Ben in the Embrace now encompassed this hangar, opening wider still—wide enough to swallow a galaxy.

At last, the final movement of the song had come. The pounding rhythm receded, and Darth Caedus felt the Force itself shudder with a sudden and complete exaltation, thundering beyond thunder. It was all he had dared to hope it could be—one more step towards an apotheosis.

Luke Skywalker's song had ended, but the dance would go on. This Caedus knew, and it gave him the strength to continue living.

"You have kissed agony, sanctified your duty in his blood. You feel sick to your stomach, unspeakably tired, profoundly weak—but you are none of these. You are stronger now than you have ever been.

"You are alone, and so you shall remain. We have have stared down our own irredeemability, and we have accepted it. We have chosen between death and death. We will make that choice many more times before this is through. This is your burden, but it is also your strength. You have the tools you need: you have a mission, you have a teacher, you have the Force.

"You will use them, and you will forge a galaxy.

"That is our way. That is the way of the Sith."

Darth Caedus rose, savoring the sensation of his whole broken body screaming as he did it, hurting as he never had before. He looked past the corpse of Luke Skywalker, past his apprentice, towards the waiting stars that glittered out beyond the mangled hangar and the mangled corpse.

_Mine,_he dared to think. He took a tentative step toward them on his broken legs, and the Force sustained him. His mouth was full of blood. He swallowed hard.

Ben Skywalker held up his shaking, bloodstained hands, and looked down at them as if he did not know them.

For a long moment there was only the harsh silence of Ben's gasping breath, the distant roar of engines, and the cresting tide of agony washing in.

"I am Darth Caedus," the master said. "What are you?"


	11. Sovereign

**X. SOVEREIGN**

_The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice._

_Voltaire_

—

The Coruscant sunset was at that moment a deep amber, casting long straight shadows over the avenues and canyons of durasteel. Neon signs winked to life one by one as traffic thickened in the sky above. Out beyond the looming towers, shining as they caught the last light of day, the first glittering gems of the Path of the Gods pierced the thin cloud cover.

Tahiri Veila remembered, even when the rest forgot. She remembered the Path at its most vibrant, remembered when these towers had been mountains overgrown with life she could not feel, when this world turned city had been unceasing jungle. The rest had forgotten the apocalypse that lurked beneath this facade of Coruscant restored, the image of civilization strangled by constricting vines.

That was what the rest of them simply could not see—about her, or about Jacen. The two of them had never forgotten Coruscant made jungle, had never escaped the images of voxyn snarling, whole worlds burning to cinders. _Blood spilling, amphistaffs tearing, their horrible mangled faces roaring_—

Enough—she couldn't let any of that distract her. Enough for her to know that she still remembered Anakin, even as the rest forgot.

As she traced a slow and deliberately circuitous path across the winding walkways of Coruscant, down mag-lifts and up again, skirting through apartment buildings and markets and airspeeder parking lots, the light bled away. The sky grew redder, and then began to blacken. She opened herself to the Force, feeling the immense flow of life around her. But at the bottom, deeper, at the core, where the canyons made of durasteel ended, lurked the monsters she could not sense. At the bottom, a constant reminder, were the little voids in the Force where Vonglife yet lurked. At the bottom of this world, and at the bottom of all things, there was the hollowness that reminded her of his death.

She stepped into a cantina, and was buffeted by music and smoke. Her eyes scanned the patrons, and then flickered towards him, and at his small acquiescing gesture towards the back of the place—he knew already that she had come alone—she made her way to a quiet and shadowed booth inset into the far wall, and waited uneasily for Kyp Durron, who stood up from the bar a cautious amount of time later, after pounding back one last shot, and joined her.

"You're late. You weren't followed?" His face was cast in shadow, but even in the dim light he looked unwell. His eyes were yellowed, his skin pale. His typical long hair had been cut short, and the prosthetic scars he wore to mask his appearance suggested a swoopbike gang member more than they did the new Grandmaster of the Jedi Order. He gestured to a roving droid for another drink.

"You look like you just finished wrestling a rancor," she said.

"Good. That means this outfit is doing its job."

"That's not what I mean, Kyp. You don't look well."

"I know. I haven't been sleeping." He cradled his drink in both hands, sighed deeply. "Stressful job, believe it or not. I'll be fine. You weren't followed?"

She nodded. "I was careful. And you wouldn't be here right now if you weren't sure, anyway."

Kyp watched her wearily. "Yeah. For both our sakes, I really hope I'm right." He leaned in closer. She could smell the whiskey on his breath.

"What's going on, Kyp? Why a meet like this? I feel like I'm being kept in the dark."

"That would be because we are keeping you in the dark. After you tried to _arrest _Leia on Hapes, do you really blame the council for hesitation? We somehow suspect that anything we entrust you with might mysteriously end up with Jacen."

"Look, I'm still a Jedi, Kyp—you're the only family I have. I just wanted to know if everyone's okay. I think I deserve that much."

He stared at her, long and hard, and then he relented. "There's not much to say. Master Skywalker's death is a hard thing. We've been laying low, trying to sort out how to lead this mess of an Order without Luke's guidance. Leia's taking it worst, she's been nearly comatose—having a twin bond severed like that must be hell. We have to move without her, though. That's why I asked you to join me here tonight. The Council is preparing to take action against Jacen."

Her eyes widened in surprise. "The whole Council?"

Kyp nodded. "Jacen is dangerous, far more dangerous than any of us ever anticipated. If he killed Master Skywalker—"

"Do you have any evidence that it was actually him?" she said. Kyp looked back at her dubiously.

"No, I guess we don't—we only have what the Force told us when we felt Luke die. Who else do you think is both powerful and crazy enough to have a go at Luke—and then kriffing win? Anyway, he is far and away our most likely suspect in that regard, and I'm not taking chances like Luke did—all anyone needs to know right now is that the longer he lives, the more kriffed this whole situation becomes. I'm not going to try to take him alone, and I'm not going to let him walk away alive."

"Are you saying you won't try to capture him? That you'll kill him even if he surrenders, even if he's defenseless? Why? What happened to redemption, Kyp? Hell, what happened to fair trials?"

"This isn't about us being Jedi, Tahiri. This is about us restoring sanity to the galaxy—with overwhelming firepower if necessary. Do you really think the Galactic Alliance justice system could hold him? He controls the courts, the Senate, the media—he'd walk. He's got fingers everywhere. He plays by his own rules and until he is dead, so will we. This is about the Order surviving, Tahiri—I will not preside over another Palpatine getting away with murder. If we don't act, there might soon come a time when there won't be any Jedi left to call me a hypocrite."

Fear was rising in Tahiri, but she did her best to suppress it, to hide it from Kyp's presence. But she knew he sensed it.

"You need to be honest with me. I know you're afraid. You don't need to be afraid, so long as you can be honest." His voice was soft. "Is your loyalty to the Council, or is it to Jacen?"

"The Council," she answered reflexively.

"Excuse me if I don't take your word for it," he said, an edge creeping into his voice. "Wish I could, but I can't. Not after Hapes. Not after losing Luke. The stakes are too high. Tahiri, let's cut the cutesy stuff. You're smart enough to know by now how Jacen operates. He's using you. You're nothing but a tool to him. He'll throw you out when he's used you up, and I would bet that he won't even blink an eye when he does it."

Kyp was right, of course. She was no fool—she recognized what Jacen was doing to her. She was not blind. Jacen gave her enough of Anakin to keep her in his palm, to keep her needing, wanting—forever. He was making her into an addict, and he was making himself into her only source of happiness.

But Kyp did not understand, really. She had chosen to take some happiness over none. She had taken brief moments at her love's side over a lifetime without him. The sight of Anakin, the touch, was priceless to her, and so she had needed Jacen, and the power that only he possessed. All of this hurt—it hurt her to confess all this, to dredge up what had gone raw and silent in her for ages—but it would all be over soon.

"Hapes was a mistake, Master Durron. It was a wake-up call—it showed me just how lost I've become. I've wavered, I know, but I realize that Jacen needs to be stopped. He's too far gone, now. What he did to me, why I helped him—he was taking me back, through the Force, to relive my memories of Anakin. I miss Anakin so much, Kyp. I shouldn't—not like this. I should have moved on years ago. But I haven't. Every minute of every day I miss him. I can't deny it any longer: something is really wrong with me, I'm sick, and Jacen makes me sicker, and I can't keep living like this. I need help, and Jacen had no interest in helping me. So I want to go home, if you'll let me. You, of all people, know it's never too late to come back."

Kyp looked at her probingly. Tahiri knew that there was too much truth in her words for them to fail to convince.

"Yeah, I do. We will help you, I promise. But we need you to show that you mean it. We need to know when and where Jacen plans to meet with you next, so that he can meet the Council instead." She felt his presence pressing against her mind, watching for the slightest hesitation, for any hint of falsehood.

"Last time I saw him he gave me the address and the keycode for an apartment near the Senate building. I'm supposed to meet him there three days from now, after the Senate special committee on intelligence lets out. We were going to go flow walking in the undercity, from back when we were kids." She choked back a small sob. She desperately wished that she had ordered a drink. She couldn't stop her hands from shaking. "Oh, Force, Kyp. I'm so sorry."

"It'll be okay, Tahiri. It'll all be over soon. Just give me the address."

She haltingly tapped the address into the keypad Kyp had slid towards her.

Kyp seemed to relax, slumping back in his chair. Behind the mask, Tahiri exhaled. "Thank you for making this easy for the both of us. I don't pretend to know how much this must hurt you. You've been hurting for a long time, and we've been too busy fighting the big fight to win the little ones by looking after our own. We couldn't even look after Luke. Once Jacen's gone, once we're safe again, we can start to change that. You know, I used to think of Jacen as a friend, too. I used to trust him. Force, it was only a couple months ago that I _knew _he was the way forward for the Order. Force, it's sad— he and Luke are both gone. Come on." He stood, and gestured for her to follow as he made his way back into the Coruscant night.

They stood on the broad walkway. Far above, beyond the massive skyscrapers made canyons and flowing traffic, the Path of the Gods shimmered, innumerable rainbow gems like a bridge straddling the inky night sky. Kyp squeezed her shoulder tightly. "I'm glad to have you on our side, Tahiri. In times like these, all we can do is stand together. We are family, after all. We've lost too many already. Once we deal with Jacen, you'll come back to the refuge with me. We're going to help you."

She nodded, looking up into his eyes. "Yeah. It's time to stop running. I'm just sorry it had to end like this. For Jacen."

He looked somber, his scarred face ghostly pale in the flickering, artificial light. "Me too. Me too."

She felt the sudden sensation of death ripple within the Force, and then she was in Kyp's arms, falling backwards towards the duracrete sidewalk, blinded by the fiery orange of an explosion.

For a moment she saw nothing but white, heard nothing but a dull ringing in her ears, felt nothing but Kyp's heart pounding against hers as he held her. She blinked away her blindness, and the first thing she saw the blowdart trembling in Kyp's exposed neck. Her hearing returned. Kyp was saying, "Oh."

He rolled off of her, and she saw him pull the dart from his neck, holding it up to examine. "Oh." His hand began to tremble, and the dart fell from it, rolling into the shadows. "Oh, stang. Not like this." His voice was weak, quavering. "Not like this."

She rolled towards Kyp, her heart pounding. Not more than a dozen meters away, the twisted wreckage of an airspeeder burned furiously. Somewhere she heard sirens. Around her, the occupants of the cantina were fleeing the building, disappearing into the night as smoke billowed from the entrance. She took hold of Kyp's hand, could barely feel his pulse. His skin shone with a thin layer of sweat. He was gasping, now, his entire body shaking. He was of course trying to purge the poison coursing within him, but he was already too far behind—far too late to save himself.

She lowered her lips to his ear, and whispered. "You were right about Jacen. But you were wrong, too. If you killed him, I would never get to see Anakin again, and I couldn't let that happen."

Kyp stared dully at the night sky, his eyes seeming to deaden as she watched. He was mouthing, "Oh, stang."

"I'm sorry, Kyp. No one is going to take Anakin away from me, ever again."

She became aware that the screaming of the sirens had peaked, and she looked up to find the gaunt, cold face of Ben Skywalker, flanked by two GAG shocktroopers. He met her gaze for a moment, then turned to Durron, drew his blaster, and fired three shots into his chest. Kyp groaned softly, and then she felt that he was dead.

Staring up at the son of Luke Skywalker, she saw the blowpipe concealed within his sleeve. Two shocktroopers helped her to stand, and she watched as two more took Kyp Durron's body, one by the legs and one by the shoulders, and threw it off the walkway under the cover of the thick and pluming black smoke, into the darkness. Another, in a hazardous materials suit, gingerly lifted the tiny dart by the safe end and placed it in a small opaque bag and sealed it.

Ben met her gaze coolly, giving her one curt nod of acknowledgment. Around them, more GAG airspeeders arrived, spilling soldiers onto the walkway. A firespeeder arrived, and began to spray flame retardant on the burning wreck that had collided with the cantina.

"Attention citizens: there has been an attempted Corellian terror attack in this district. Repeat, there has been an attempted Corellian terror attack. Remain calm. The threat has been averted, and the suspect has been apprehended. Remain in your homes. We will have more information as soon as it is available. Repeat, there has been an attempted Corellian terror attack in this district…"

Jacen would be very pleased with her. Kyp Durron had embraced the core of the world where the Vonglife lurked, the dark place so like the one where her love had died and been consumed by the horror of a galaxy where there was no justice.

But there was justice—not a great deal, not enough to let her forget, but some faint glitter—because Jacen would let Tahiri Veila see Anakin again.


	12. Void

**XI. VOID**

_There is a concept which corrupts and upsets all others. I refer not to Evil, whose limited realm is that of ethics; I refer to the infinite.  
Jorge Luis Borges_

—

"We are so glad that you could join us, lust-toad."

Zekk heard her voice, and then he was conscious again. His pounding head and the cold dread in his gut told him he was in trouble. With effort, he willed his eyes open, and saw her. Alema Rar's face hovered inches away from his own, smiling.

"Our hunter has become our captive. Do you see? There is Balance in all things."

_Undercity at twilight, perched, watching through the scope the expanse of airspeeders flowing before the cantina where Master Durron had scheduled the meet, Force tingling with possibility, watching them standing on the broad walk in the dim light and then the sudden ripple of death, spinning but too late, spinning before he knew, scarred blue skin and shining white teeth smiling as the blackness took him_—

"Oh, stang," he groaned, his stomach churning. He was utterly defenseless, inches away from one of the most unstable Force users in the galaxy.

No, this was not good at all.

"You are not Leia Solo, but you are an incongruity in need of balancing, and your presence here still gives us great joy." She reached out with her remaining original hand, brushed his cheek. Were he not so tightly bound, he would have had to suppress the urge to draw back.

"Our Master said we could have all the fun we wanted with you."

"I'd rather you didn't," he rasped.

Zekk knew from the characteristic way his body ached that he had been hit with a couple stun bolts—enough to fry a non-Jedi. Even if he did break out of these bonds, he wasn't sure that he could stand—let alone walk. His connection with the Force was weak, and it gave him no strength—all he could feel in it was Alema's glittering malice.

Alema was sneering back at him when his vision blurred back into coherence.

"Yes, yes, you think we aren't attractive. Of course. Mangle us, and then jeer at our ugliness. How we _hate _all of you. How your hypocrisy shows when held up against the solemn work of my master. And how satisfying to see you brought here, at last in your just place. How would you look with a few less appendages, Zekk? How about a few dozen acid scars, inflicted just so? Did you ever, perhaps, stop to wonder what it was like for us, when we were eaten alive? All this we can show you."

She held her knife up to his face, traced it with an unbearable lightness across his exposed neck. "We get to see you bleed. See, sorrow that Jaina Solo feels is sorrow that her mother feels." She drew it closer, deeper, almost imperceptibly, with a malevolent slowness. But her bloodlust was unrestrainable, radiating out of her and through him. She pulled the knife backwards so fast that he couldn't track it, angled it towards his throat, and his heart leapt in his chest—

"Not just yet." The voice was familiar. He couldn't place it. Not Jacen himself, but an awful lot like him. "Remember Balance, Alema."

"But—"

"After all his crimes, why should you give him a merciful death? Why should you let him go that easily? Make him wait. Draw out his suffering. Make the waiting into suffering. After all, how long have you had to wait? He is one of the Jedi who betrayed you. Let him taste what you have tasted."

She stopped, considered this, still holding the knife aloft. Her hands were shaking with the adrenaline. After a long moment, she mastered herself once more.

"No, of course. It would not serve the Balance if we ended your misery quickly, lust-toad, satisfying as it might be to see you bleed out here and now. You ought to suffer like we have suffered."

Her smile widened, her eyes sharpening with malice, and he was lost in their blackness. "You see, Zekk, we have suffered _so slowly_."

His bonds tightened, and now he realized that they were alive, digging into his wrists, writhing around him, drawing him deeper. Alema watched, her mad smile vibrantly white.

"You will see what it is to be one of us: lost. See what it is like to have nothing at all but how much it hurts."

Then the pain began to mount, dull as it broke skin, tearing through him, hammering, pulsing, blooming. Time seemed to cease, but for the pain's rising pitch, and he could no longer see, and he reached to the Force, but all he could feel was malice and the Vonglife wrapping around him, constricting him, strangling—

Zekk hung in a void that deepened, an infinity that defied itself by growing, ever growing, lost to time. Oh, he had suffered before. But this was worse, because there was no hope. He had failed the Order in its darkest hour, he was at the mercy of Alema Rar, who knew no mercy, the Force gave him no breath of sanity, no promise of rescue. Time ran somewhere far beyond his perception, and he hung forever.

—

"The True Gods decree that life is suffering, and give us pain to demonstrate their truth. Pain is our teacher, our taskmaster. All life shrinks away from pain, because the Gods are pain. Do you understand?"

Zekk did not. He knew nothing but the void and the voice, whispering.

"Only the unfaithful flee from the whip of the Gods. You must understand. When we suffer most, we are closest to them. When we do not flee from pain we become most like them, build ourselves most in their image. The creator butchered himself to make us, reached the zenith of pain with suffering and joy. Here, in the Embrace, you are the closest you can come to the real song of the Force. Tell me, Zekk. What is the pain whispering?"

"Is Grand Master Durron alive?"

"I'm afraid not. Everyone runs out of luck sometime. What is the pain whispering, Zekk?"

"Nothing," he said, his voice dry, cracking. Nothing but pain, forever, meaningless and horrible.

"In the beginning, there was only Yun-Yuuzhan. Only when Yun-Yuuzhan chose, in his infinite kindness, to tear himself apart, piece by piece, did existence come into being. Pain is the heart of all things we can know. Pain is not the absence of meaning, or the destruction of meaning—it is the core of it. I have given you a gift, and I have exposed myself to great risk in doing so. I have prolonged your life long enough for you to understand. I want you to understand. What is the pain trying to tell you?"

"The Vong gods were lies," Zekk murmured.

"Yes, they were. But a good lie has a seed of truth. Pain, that is—its power, its omnipresence—are true, even though Yun-Yuuzhan was a falsification. The Vong were cut off from the Force, so they reached to the next closest thing—the Force's proxy."

But Zekk was farthest from the Force at the moment he was most in pain, feeling it dimly, a faded memory. He could not think, only suffer.

"You only have one chance, Zekk. You need to be strong."

"Let me die."

"I will, if you want it, and I will even promise you that it will be merciful and quick. But in exchange, I want something. You have to listen to the pain and share its lesson with me. I want to know what you see in there."

"No more. I can't. I can't."

"Well, you'll die anyway. But you know Alema: it might be _years _from now. You might die in her tender mercies—of old age."

He wanted to groan, to scream, but there was no air in his lungs. He wheezed. The prospect of spending years here was dizzying, nightmarish. This voice was robbing him of the precious little strength he yet had.

"You can die now, because you are too dangerous to allow to live, or you can die when she gets tired of using you as her pincushion. It's your decision."

"What difference would it make?"

"No difference. All the difference in the world. You have to decide. If it helps, consider that if I don't get what I want from you, I'll have to try and crack open another Jedi."

"What are you?" Zekk asked.

There was a pregnant pause. "I am a student. I am a teacher. What are you?"

The question stung, because he did not know. All the words he had used to describe himself seemed to peel away before the white hot furnace of the Embrace. Zekk. Jedi. Friend. Human.

"Ah—very good. You've stumbled upon the first key realization. Words are lies that you build as a wall between yourself and truth. Let it fall away. Know the Embrace, better even than you know yourself."

He tried, but words were the only thing holding him above the precipice, the only thing between Zekk and the void.

"Let go of them. Words are less than the things they describe. Let go of the word void. Look at what all this really is. Find what I'm asking you to find."

"I can't."

"You will. Remember Myrkr, when you reached the nadir of hope. Remember every wound, every ache, every loss. Do not fear them. Use them. They are the best part of you. Embrace them."

He remembered, remembered blaster wounds and lightsaber wounds and emotional wounds. The pain made echoes of burned flesh and sorrow and suffering—beneath the hail of thud bugs, stomach sliced by Ben Skywalker, he knew that Jaina did not love him—and it compounded, and compounded, and for a moment, all he was was pain. Something washed away.

When he could feel it again, the void was no longer a void. He saw shapes in the white, patterns, the branching of nerves like roots burning, patterns that grew as he watched. Wrapped in Vonglife he could not feel, the Force began to explode into life, bounding past what he had known. It was eternity, and in it he was watching himself, watching the Force, watching the headquarters of the Galactic Alliance Guard through the branches of pain, the pain that was life, watching the gaunt pale face of Ben Skywalker smile before the writhing Embrace of Pain, watching himself locked in it. Dancers and dance.

He understood the tragedy that had befallen his Order, had befallen the galaxy, as he saw that Ben's blue eyes, Luke Skywalker's eyes, were flecked with gold. He was watching Ben Skywalker one moment, stars the next, understanding how life was pain, and unlife was pain, and that pain ruled the Force because pain was the Force.

The pain was whispering truth, and he understood Ben Skywalker. Ben had felt something like this too, as he fell into darkness. And though Ben spoke with the confidence of his master, who Zekk could feel gleaming far across space and time like a beacon to all things that suffered, the boy still wondered if he had truly glimpsed truth in the Embrace, or had merely gone mad in it—and he was willing to throw as many Jedi as necessary into the tender mercies of the Embrace to see if he alone had broken. He wanted a Jedi to confirm the validity of that enormous epiphany which had driven him into Sithhood, wanted Zekk to use the power of the transcendent moment, should he reach it, to scry the future.

An unending expanse of pain greeted him, a place where nerves shivered, stretched raw and red, golden threads of potential that were really ligaments drawn taut into infinite wires. He could have spoken of a galaxy aflame, a tide of darkness rising and falling once more, victories and failures and deaths and births, truths and untruths, but he felt the time that tempered pain, felt his epiphany burning away even as he held it. He would speak one solitary truth, the only truth that did not burn, savoring the spectrum of pain in his beaten lungs, his aching jaw, his desert-dry throat.

"You weren't wrong, Ben. There is truth in pain. A hell of a lot of truth."

"I thought so. What have you come to know?"

It was a little truth that he chose to offer up, not the prophecy or vision Ben Skywalker sought in the immense scale of a universe of agony, but it was a truth nonetheless. It was a truth that enveloped the spiraling galaxy, and Ben Skywalker's eyes. It was a gift fit for a Sith Lord and his apprentice—a truth that enveloped lies, a truth that was a lie, a truth that they understood but could not understand.

"We are all wheels," Zekk said. "And we are all trapped. What has come before, will come again."

Ben Skywalker stared beyond his captive in the Embrace, appearing much older than the teenage boy he was in his spotless Guard uniform, in the ashen bags under his tired eyes, in his perfectly erect posture and careful probing presence. He waited for a moment for more, but all was silent again.

"As if I didn't already know that. You know, it will be quite a waste to throw you to the dog. You don't have to die today. I could pull some strings, get you out from under Alema. I'd have to put you on ice for a few years, but I would bring you out as a candidate for apprenticeship when the time comes. You have potential, obviously."

"Not interested. We made our bargain."

"Fair enough. Admirable. Of course, I'll get nothing more from one of Yun-Yuuzhan's chosen few. I have no further means by which I can coerce you. You've set aside a profound worry in my mind, for which I am grateful, and you held up your end of the bargain. So."

"Goodbye, Ben."

"Goodbye, Zekk. She can take nothing from you but your life. We both know there are far worse things to lose than that."

Ben turned and left, speaking into his commlink, never looking back at the Jedi Knight he had known since his earliest days at the Academy, never looking back at the Jedi Knight he had nearly killed months ago aboard the _Falcon_—never looking back at the Jedi Knight he was sentencing to death at the hands of Alema Rar.

"Of course I felt it. I know you wanted to have your fun with him, but our master would not be pleased if we risked letting something that dangerous escape," he said, and the door slid shut with a quiet _woosh _behind him.

Zekk hung there, in the afterglow, watching what would become of the sound he had been. His death would be unknown to all but a few, felt distantly by the Jedi who had known him. There was no record of his capture here to classify, and there would be no evidence of his passing to find—Alema would leave behind scant little in the way of remains for Galactic Alliance Guard spooks to dispose of. His love for Jaina—and he knew now that it had always been a love, no matter how he had tried to escape it—would go unrequited. His Order would suffer, buckle, gasp for life. Condemned by the son of the man he had admired most, slain by the broken woman he had hunted, killed without Ganner's chance to even fight back. So much for dying like a Jedi. He had to admire the Sith, Jacen Solo and Ben Skywalker, in the end. They knew the Embrace well.

It was all pain as Alema Rar descended upon his helpless frame, slicing with skill born from personal experience, inflicting horror beyond horror and laughing as he bled out into a Force painted in shades of torment, sad and beautiful and eternal.

Zekk remembered blue eyes flecked with gold.


	13. Beloved

**XII. BELOVED**

_Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.  
Antoine de Saint-Exupery_

—

A long shadow flowed in the waxing light, shaping and reshaping. Dawn seemed to hang still in the bedroom, where the first rays of light slanted onto a sleeping face. A pale hand reached down towards a smooth flat stomach, slightly lifted and lapsing with shallow breath. The hand reached past the rust-red locks, gave her forehead a tender, gentle touch.

A golden thread divided forever, shimmering as it reached into eternity. In the haze she felt his touch, which she had prepared herself to never feel again. For a moment she was lost in it, then memory came back all at once, then she was out of the bed, alert, perceiving as she came to her feet, her blue lightsaber ignited.

The point hummed at Jacen Solo's throat. He looked at her down the lightsaber's glowing shaft, somber, utterly calm, hands still and empty within the folds of his cloak, eerily ready.

"Choose, and act," he said.

She did neither. They hung, suspended, in the dawn. Jacen's presence was overpowering—this time he was not suppressing himself in the Force, as he so often had when they were—

No, she reminded herself. This was a demon, or maybe a force of nature, wearing Jacen Solo's skin, and everything it did was a trick. This was the Jacen Solo who had tried to kill his own parents, who had turned Kashyyyk into a firestorm. She couldn't even begin to estimate how many people he had killed in the last few months, directly or otherwise. This was not her love. Her love had died.

But whatever it was, it was still wearing his flesh. The broad shoulders, the soft sad compassionate eyes, which seemed to shine in the pool of light that illuminated the dust swirling around them—all reminded her of what had been, all reminded her of the man she had loved. She opened herself to the Force, preparing to kill, and was momentarily stunned by the pain she felt radiating from him like flame. It was abundantly clear that he was in the purest of agonies—he shouldn't have been alive, let alone conscious or standing. Most of the bones in his body were broken, and he was holding them unflinchingly rigid inside of himself so that he might heal using the Force alone, supporting himself and maintaining his consciousness with it. Her first impulse was to lend him her power so that his burden might be lessened—she reprimanded herself for her foolishness. Still, he was obviously in no position for a fight—if he was, even in a state like this, then he had become something immensely and terribly powerful indeed.

"How did you get in here, Jacen?" She asked.

He smiled, roguish, for a moment looking strikingly like his father, apparently oblivious to the blade hovering at his neck and the agony she felt rolling off of him in ceaseless tidal roars. "It's good to see you, Tenel Ka. I snuck in. Haven't we learned by now to employ strong-minded bodyguards?"

She had. Hers were the strongest minds she could find, but apparently they were not strong enough to resist Jacen Solo. Nor, apparently, was she capable of sensing him before he chose to be sensed. Her heart pounded, and she knew that he knew.

"Your bones," she said.

The smile faded. "My uncle came for my life. It was a very near thing."

"I don't want your lies. Do you really think I would believe that Luke could never do something like that? All he wanted—and all any Jedi wants—was to put you out of your misery before you hurt more people."

It was very difficult for her to keep the tide of emotion from welling up in her. Distance had made it much easier to think about Jacen without the immediate sadness of seeing him made so wretched. It was hard to answer the question Jacen had left unspoken: Luke would not have done it, perhaps, but who else _could_have ever done that kind of damage to Jacen?

Jacen looked sad. "I'm not lying. I am finished with lying to you."

"I thought I made myself clear on Kashyyyk, Colonel. I can no longer condone what you do or who you have become. And that's _your_ fault, not mine." Her eyes were beginning to water, and she knew that he knew that, too. It was much harder to say face to face than it had been on Kashyyyk, much harder when her lover's eyes gazed back, when his suffering presence whirled in the dust surrounding them, part familiar and part alien. "Why did you come here, Jacen? Why do I have to be the one to put you down?"

"I've asked a lot of you, Tenel Ka. More than I ever should have. More than I have any right to be forgiven for. Queen Mother, I am here only to admit that terrible mistake, and make my meager attempt at rectifying it before I submit to your judgment. I had to try. I have hidden far too much from you, Tenel Ka, and that is not how I want you to remember me in the likely event that I die in the near future. I am here because I want to tell you everything. I want to tell you why I did what I did before it becomes too late to say. I owe you that, and much more."

The truth: how far beyond the simple and atrocious war crimes that she knew of with certainty had Jacen Solo gone? What further depravities had he embraced in the months of disorganization and feuding within the Jedi Order that had followed the deaths of Ben and Luke Skywalker? How had he exerted his influence over the galaxy during the breakdown in the Order that followed Kyp Durron and Zekk's disappearance during their mission to Coruscant—their mission to pave the way for a Jedi Council attempt on the life of the so-called Chief of State himself?

How many of those events had the monster who stood before her been directly responsible for? Had he murdered a teenage boy, or his first Jedi Master, or friends that he had fought alongside for so many years? Had he murdered some of them? All of them? Or had he used puppets, tricked simple minds, manipulated and schemed innocents into doing his dirty work? Or had he not caused these deaths and disappearances, but merely used them for his own gain?

Well, gain he had. The Holonet was abuzz with images of Jacen Solo commanding from the bridge of the _Anakin Solo_, of Jacen Solo cutting through Senate red-tape to make sure the soldiers of the Galactic Alliance were fighting fit, of Jacen Solo speaking before adoring crowds, promising safety, security, prosperity. The equilibrium between the Confederacy and the GA had seemingly coalesced—it had been weeks since a system had seceded, weeks without a major push by either side. Jacen's hard-line stance against seceding worlds was bearing political and military fruit, morally bankrupt as it was, and she had been forced to admire it as a fellow politician: it starved Confederate morale and strained already tenuous supply lines, bolstered his support in loyalist systems, and frightened everyone in the middle into staying put—herself included.

Hapes had withdrawn from the war after Kashyyyk, severing diplomatic relations with the Galactic Alliance and the Confederacy. And as the infighting within the Jedi Order had worsened, Jedi contact with the Hapes Cluster had grown scarce.

All of this, each facet of this galactic inferno, seemed infused with the will of Jacen Solo.

That was the Jacen Solo who she imagined herself beheading, in one instant, then and there, ending all this madness forever.

Why hadn't she?

"Queen Mother, I want you to understand why there is no price too high. There is no price that is within my ability to pay that I will not pay."

"For what? For power? For an Empire? Jacen Solo, you have become blind to the cost of what you do—"

"No," Jacen said, in a tone that silenced her, as if the word had emerged from his mouth cast from durasteel. "In that regard, I believe that you are wrong. I am very much aware of the costs. I want something much simpler than any of that." He was whirling in the Force, expanding, beginning to draw her in.

"Stop. Stop or I will cut you down. Jacen Solo—"

He stopped.

"If ever you loved me, Tenel Ka, then I am asking you to trust me this one last time. I haven't earned it. But please, if ever you loved me, then let me show you why I have done these things. So that our daughter can know. Judge me, kill me, but honor my last request. Only that. It is important to me above all other things that you know."

His presence was massive and only growing, a leviathan enveloping her, pressing against the projection of strength that she struggled to maintain. It coiled and uncoiled, rippling like muscle in the Force, a natural extension of the power he seemed to radiate. But it was gentle, too, loving and open, like the slightest touch on a sleeping lover's forehead—he wouldn't force it on her, he would only show her if she was willing to see—he was all tender where he held the power within himself away from her mind, away from her body. Even still, he had left himself entirely at the mercy of her blade.

His tender touch, and the booming massive presence, lean and pale but poised, sad eyes full of love—she forgot for a moment the broken logic of the situation, the impossibility of the fact that she had not summoned her guards to come to her aid—as if she even needed them to strike him down—the very fact that Jacen Solo was here at all, that he calmly conversed with her, even as she held death centimeters away from his pale neck.

"Then show me," she said, and she did not know why she said it. But it was intoxicating to feel him again, to feel the man she loved—no monster, no Darth Vader. But then he was pressing against her mind, asking gently in the Force to enter, and she acquiesced, and then he swept her up, and then—

—

_A golden thread divided forever, shimmering as it reached beyond her bedroom, beyond Hapes the planet, Hapes the cluster, reaching beyond stars and systems, novas, new worlds and dying ones, through the core of the galaxy, into the outer rim and the unknown regions, out into the infinite expanse of time and the blackness beyond the galaxy._

_The golden thread kept running, and splitting, and she had to follow it down._

_It was too much, entirely too much for one consciousness to comprehend, as the thread split like roots, like nerves, veins of pulsing life unending, and she was losing herself in it until she felt Jacen's hand clasping hers. He gave her strength, strength to trace the thread as it moved, wordlessly showing her how to see in the impossible intricacies shapes forming, flashes of fragments of images:_

_Lightsabers fixed, hanging over the faces painted in shades of sorrow and agony and peace, whole worlds burning, infinite wires tracing nothingness when lives ended, seeing in the shimmering shapes empty eyes watching the void forever._

Closer.

_The intersections of death like lines of structural strength in crystal made her aware of the shatter points, the moments where infinite potential narrowed into moments intricate as crystal, entering at angles that diverged, spiraling and twisting and shaping into something entirely new._

Closer.

_The anatomy of a shatter point: a time, a place, a decision. A choice and an action, Jacen whispered. The threads shifted, lurched, transformed, and she understood why the Jedi had always feared looking into what could be. It was too difficult, far too difficult, to watch the impossible clockwork machinery of the galaxy turning, to divine in it what could be. But it was intoxicating too, thrilling in its compounding mysteries, in the flashes of insight that lay beyond the next branching golden web weaving._

Closer.

_She recognized the images she saw in this shatter point, images that became clearer, lasted longer, now came with motion, sound and touch and smell and thought. Lumiya, and Luke and Ben and Mara, threads that were the Jedi, threads that were an asteroid near Bimmiel where everything would change forever._

_Now she realized she was not watching the future, but the past—Jacen's past, watching Jacen's future. And death was heavy in the threads, heavy in a locus as enormous as Jacen had ever conceived of, inevitable in every permutation of the shatter point forming. A death at every turn linked, billions of lives all bound to one act, one motion. A heart breaking, buffeted by the colossal weight of an unhappy destiny, seeing with sad eyes how much love would have to perish, how much he would have to destroy in order to save, denying what he saw in the future he chose as he chose it._

_He struck surgically, and then Nelani Dinn was dead. And then the locus was spiraling, reacting, shifting, and he was becoming what he knew he must become, the only thing he could become to save all but himself: Sith, ruler, teacher. He was doing such immensely awful things, and suffering with them in silence. He was so ready to die alone and apart, scorned by history, scorned by his family, all that reasoned and divined in him left incomprehensible to those he left behind. It was in that spirit that he had subsumed the boy Skywalker, like a lion devouring the lamb, incorporating him into the massive enterprise which he had undertaken. It was in that spirit that Luke had come to them, ravening with loss, all broken, and in that spirit that they had together reduced him to silence._

_That spirit, that enormous burden and mission and wish, all run together, which had consumed Durron and Zekk, and which had harnessed the broken glass tornado of Alema Rar and the lumbering beast of the Senate and all the rest of it—turn by turn and twist by twist, she came to know the entire immense conspiracy Jacen had built._

_And at the core, Tenel Ka knew that through all of it he had indeed, to the best of his considerable knowledge and skill, chosen the future where their daughter would live without war. He had shouldered all burdens, and he had carried them into the enormity of the darkness. All for love—the slow burn of the poison consuming Mara, the sweat sheen of Ben Skywalker breaking, the long bright glinting, red and silver and white, of the knife that had killed Luke Skywalker—all for the love of her._

—

"Oh, Jacen," Tenel Ka said, as the vision receded, returning to the bedroom at dawn. "Oh, Jacen." She was on the bed, watching the dust swirl above her, winking in and out of the sunlight. Jacen had caught her when the memory made her swoon, laid her gently down. Her lightsaber must have fallen—he had pressed it back into her hand. He sat on the edge of the bed, wrapped in his cloak, his eyes glassy from the shared memory.

This was another shatter point, she realized, one that hung on her decision now. She had a simple decision to make, following from all that she had just learned: would Jacen Solo leave this room alive? And that question had natural corollaries: did she still love him? Did she understand why he had become a Sith? Could she forgive him for what he had done?

Could she go farther still? Might he somehow, through all the sin, have done the right thing?

Breathing deeply, drawing into the Force, she tried to meditate. She needed to approach this situation rationally, not emotionally. She needed truth, but in her lingering perception of the threads there was no truth to be found, only choice and action.

She was increasingly aware that there was no monster wearing Jacen Solo's skin. Though monster it may be, this was the man she had known—changed, darkened, baptized in blood—but himself. No equivocation. He had chosen his path, chosen it rationally, and wherever it had led him, it began with love. He regretted all of it, the many wounds he had inflicted—and among them most of all concealing so much truth from her—but given a second chance, she knew that he would do it all again without hesitation.

She understood what he had seen in his visions, understood the agony above agonies that was laying his life at the feet of his love, understood how he had become ensnared in his own potential, bound by his own vision to choose between tragedies—to make the least worst decision. She understood better now than she ever had before the whirling intelligence that worked within Jacen Solo, the vision that had forced him to ponder the questions that Jedi philosophy could not answer, and the vision that had engineered a galactic conspiracy down to this very moment.

She had looked into his consciousness for the first time, and had seen a father's fear, a lover's tenderness, and an immense amount of sadness. And she understood how divided he was, how direly he had longed to seek her counsel and how direly he now feared her rejection. She had felt the moment when she had broken with Jacen from Jacen's own perspective—that instant of black and bottomless dread becoming realized, that powerless moment where he could only watch the priceless key slip his grasp and recede into the void. He was so terribly lonely. Even now, after all the distance that had grown between them, she still understood him. They were still so very much alike.

It was funny, in a way. Around Jacen, simple words seemed to become more ambiguous. Words such as 'murderer'. Words such as 'traitor'. Words such as 'Sith'.

She had been so strong over Kashyyyk—it had been so much easier to reject him without his presence enfolding her. Somehow, he had made a simple decision into an agonizingly difficult one.

Jacen rose, and so did she.

He turned, and they stood, still, frozen, watching each other, gray eyes locked on brown. They were motionless, but Tenel Ka felt something changing inside of her.

Perhaps they had both sacrificed enough. Perhaps there had been enough death. Perhaps it was time for change. Perhaps with one small motion she could solve the shatterpoint of this moment, with just a single careful touch, and turn the looming catastrophe into a wellspring of life, a font of peace that would feed a devastated galaxy. She could be his mercy in an otherwise merciless land, and his friend and partner in the dangerous and dark places he traversed. She could love him through his sickness, and through the galaxy's sickness, and she could break the wheel that might turn both of them back into the fate of Anakin Skywalker, and she could look at her daughter without the looming dread of the coming moment of telling her that her father was an evil man who died for the terrible things he had done. Jacen had brought her an unfathomably complex knot of golden threads; Tenel Ka could solve it with one slice.

She knew that she was contemplating betrayal of the Jedi, knew that she was being seduced by a Sith, knew that accepting him now would condone every crime he had committed, and would commit yet. She saw that this would bind her irrevocably to Jacen's greater good, to his better future—still, she was blinking past the corpses of Mara and Luke—to assist Jacen in precisely trimming the flow of totality, event by event, into a singular future, at his side down a golden path that only he could scry.

But he was so handsome, even pale as he was, even deep as the bags beneath his eyes were—he looked very much like his father, rugged and confident and ready, even for death. And for all the evil things he had done, there was absolutely nothing malicious in his presence towards her, and there had been no malice in the memory, in any of it—only the deepest sadness, and the iron will, and a terrible loneliness that she knew within herself. He had no contingency plan should she reject him. He would accept any judgment she might render. Of that she was absolutely certain.

But if she could forgive him now, understood him and accepted him, then that loneliness would be banished, and a galaxy that had tilted towards madness could begin to right itself.

Jacen Solo reached out to her, hand open. And she read his wonder, the gaping horror and promise of the moment stretching out.

For a long moment, they watched each other, she reading him and him offering himself up to her, beckoning towards a rediscovered future.

Her heart pounded. Her eyes watered. His hand quivered, just slightly, with every bone inside it broken.

"Partners?" She asked.

"Partners," he answered.

Her hand rose to meet his, and they connected, the Force thundering, the threads diverging, and then they were embracing.

"Did you think I would forget you?" Jacen Solo asked.

"I did not know."

"Never," he said, unable to keep the quiver of emotion out of his calm quiet voice. "Never. In the face of a thousand futures without you, in the face of a thousand betrayals, though I die a thousand deaths, throttled by a thousand threads, I would never forget the love of my life."

Gently, he wiped a tear from her cheek. He craned his head to kiss her pale neck, felt her shiver. "I will show you a better galaxy, Tenel Ka," he murmured. "I will make one for you."

"I know," she said.

She forced herself to believe completely that he was strong enough, wise enough, loving and just and willing to sacrifice so much for the most beautiful vision of what could be.

"I see our future: Only love. Only peace. Only right."

He was sharing it with her, hiding nothing, and she could see it too. All his visions, all his knowledge, all that had previously been secret was now known to her in that Force union, quite unlike anything she had ever experienced, and she judged his decisions, and in the final evaluation she agreed that his terrible calculus was correct. They belonged together. They always had.

His steady hands held her, though the bones within were broken, his dark tired handsome face still in the morning light, still as dawn struck him, his soft brown eyes sad and gentle and tender as she had remembered.

"My flower," he said. "My dearest flower."

Love surprised Tenel Ka. She was surprised as she pressed herself harder against him, as he drew her deeper, feeling their shapes become one, surprised as she found herself forgiving Jacen Solo, sealing away her doubts forever, found her heart melting under the eyes she loved, which she had declared dead and gone while Kashyyyk burned.

Locked within his grasp, locked within the smooth shapes of his black cloak, Tenel Ka forgot that he lied, forgot that he sinned, absolved him of crimes past and pending. She was tracing the outlines of bone inside of him, giving him all of the power she could muster to provide him with even a moment of relief from his many wounds. She would stand by him, and he would stand by her, and together they could heal a galaxy, and make a flower. She herself was the last piece of his puzzle; now the great conspiracy was complete.

Hapes would rejoin the war on the side of the Alliance, and that would be enough to tip the scales. Jacen would end the Confederacy, and he would install himself as ruler in perpetuity, and she would be his queen. Riding a tidal wave of public approval, she could silence the nobles who would oppose her relationship with him, make the issue of Allana's parentage minuscule next to the Consortium's new-found prestige and unprecedented power. They would save Allana. They would save so many people. There would be costs; these she finally accepted, as her husband had. It would be a miracle dearly purchased.

"Oh, Jacen," she said. "It's perfect."

Their eyes locked, Jacen Solo's were churning from brown to bronze to gold as they watered, and then they kissed, and Tenel Ka was lost in it.


	14. Apprehension

**XIII. APPREHENSION**

_War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love.  
Tim O'Brien_

—

The Star Destroyer _Anakin Solo_ flared into existence, a single black arrowhead against a field of glittering stars. For a moment it was suspended alone, void upon void, ion engines roaring against vacuum. An instant later, dozens of ships began to flare into existence around it, and then the _Anakin Solo _was the point of a spear, flanked on both sides by the dual-saucers of Hapan Battle Dragons, the arrowheads of _Nova _battle-cruisers.

Then came the torrents of laser fire, the efflux trails of missiles spiraling in all directions, swarms of snubfighters racing to meet, and the void was lit with battle.

The spear thrust forward, meeting the defenders, and from the bridge of the _Anakin Solo, _Centerpoint Station was a pinprick against the starscape growing larger by the moment.

Ben Skywalker was one with that spearhead, one with each ship that met the rapidly scrambling forces of Correlia. The _Anakin Solo _was his beating heart, Battle Dragons his arms, cruisers his fingers, snubfighters each individual nerve reacting instantly to his impulses. And so he danced, the unifying conduit between thousands of minds, driving, driven. Into their connection he poured focus, courage, single-minded determination. To some he gave battle lust, to some he urged caution. He was the voice that told them to remember their training, he was the hands, perfectly steady, which clutched snubfighter yokes, the sensation that told gunners to take long shots they would not otherwise risk, the sense of satisfaction they felt when those shots hit home.

With an arm he would swat, and missiles would collide in blossoms of flame against enemy capital ships. With his fingers he would grasp, encircling, enclosing, mangling his foe.

He was at once on the bridge, at his master's side, eyes shut tight in concentration, and watching through the eyes of thousands a composite of the battle unfolding, taking that image and making it whole, making this engagement into something driven by his own song.

Ben remembered the last weeks. He remembered the feints, the supply-line raids, the small-scale skirmishes his master had used to teach him the art of battle meditation. He remembered the words that drove his action.

_Battle meditation is a tool with two practical applications. The first pertains to your role as a commander in a military engagement. Battle meditation can boost morale, make units in an engagement act as a cohesive whole, reinforce an overall strategy in the course of a fleet engagement on the scale of individual hearts and minds. The opposite of all of this is also true: a Force-user skilled in the technique can also turn it upon the enemy fleet, lowering reaction times, interfering with individual senses, fogging minds. You will learn to harness both sides of the coin in the weeks to come._

_The second use of battle meditation is more closely tied to our roles as seers in the Force. Force contact with thousands of beings, even on the relatively limited scale of battle meditation, has very interesting consequences. Among other things, it provides an intense conduit to the larger currents of the Force. Battle meditation creates a feedback loop: your contact with such an immense amount of life amplifies your Force abilities, which amplifies in turn the power of your contact. This power also amplifies your ability to scry the future, amplifies your capacity as leader—a single user of battle meditation in an engagement can turn an otherwise unwinnable battle with ease. You recall that the Jedi conducted extensive experimentation with battle melding during the Yuuzhan Vong war._

_I think they feared the repercussions of the tactic, and did not use it to its full effectiveness. There is a potential for loss in battle meditation used on any scale—much the same as many of the abilities that a Sith might employ. Many Jedi came to avoid battle melding because of the emotional and mental duress of death and near-death as felt through it, as well as the muddling of personality and emotion that can take place. The answer to that threat is nothing more or less than a strong mind, a unifying drive, capable of both guiding the current and remaining untouched by it. You must be prepared for extremely taxing mental and emotional duress, the duress of thousands fighting for their lives. You must be prepared to keep the objectives of a combat engagement chief in your mind, suppressing the natural desire you will feel to save lives rather than defeat the enemy. All you are going to have as a bastion when you are submerged in meditation will be your will, hard as you can make it, and your connection with the Force._

_I will show you how._

And so he danced along the thin line between his mind and theirs, correcting himself, correcting the fleet that was an extension of himself, strengthening the edges of the spearhead as it drew ever nearer. He was the order underlying a system of apparent chaos, a wordless order made of iron, invisible lines of truth binding the collected Galactic Alliance and Hapan fleet.

In the visions of the bridge crew of the _Anakin Solo_, he watched himself, watched his master. They looked at the two figures cloaked in black at the head of the bridge with appropriate reverence. Subtle tendrils of Force influence rippled forward from Darth Caedus and Ben Skywalker, plain to those who had the power to see.

Together they stood poised, pristine in their fathomless black uniforms, erect in perfect military postures, gold eyes glowing, power crackling around them, silent and invisible. Ben decided that together they looked ready.

_We are both very much ready,_ Caedus responded, as naturally as if he had interjected into a conversation, not into Ben's private thoughts, _to end this war once and for all._

Ben nodded in response. He was a tidal wave roaring, a proton torpedo exploding, the ion-wash of engines and the dense deadly energy of turbolaser bolts, and he did not have to look to know that Darth Caedus smiled.

—

Kayla Sepen couldn't think. She knew what she wanted to do, and tried to will her body to do it, but something kept getting lost along the way. She knew that she was an Ensign aboard the corvette _Corellian Spirit_, and she knew that she was supposed to be manning the targeting systems that would enable the ship to effectively attack the Galactic Alliance fleet that had just jumped into the system.

She tried to reach towards her console, but her arms remained limp, refusing to move. She tried to step forward, but instead she toppled to the durasteel deck, banging her head. After a moment, she cursed, and she looked up at the Ensign beside her, still standing, who was repeatedly missing a button on his console, scowling with the effort of trying and failing to punch the key. Somewhere, the captain was shouting, but the words were too garbled for her to understand.

Somewhere a siren was going off, and somewhere she heard someone saying something about the bulkheads, about venting atmosphere. An officer appeared, his face hovering inches above her own.

"Balance," he said serenely. "Balance. You see? All things are in balance."

The ship rocked, and he toppled out of her vision. She screamed at herself to stand, to flee, adrenaline roaring in her body even as she lay sprawled, paralyzed. She cried for help, for someone to tell her what was going on, but she found herself saying "Balance in all things, yes, all things in their perfect and assigned order, yes."

The sirens grew louder, and the garbled shouts turned to screams, and they reached a peak where everything was sound but it seemed to her to have no origin, and then the transparisteel viewport shattered.

There was an immense wind and then no noise at all, and she was floating in the blackness, twisting slowly, watching the distant shapes of Centerpoint and stars and ships bursting in oranges and yellows.

She was aware that her lips were mouthing the word she did not understand, mouthing _balance_. She was aware, distantly, of something malevolent inside of her mind, a scarred blue face beaming with feral joy.

Then she was aware of nothing, forever.

—

"Welcome to Corellia, Admiral Darklighter."

"I would say that it is a pleasure, Colonel, but I somehow doubt that I am going to enjoy helping you acquire your own personal superweapon."

"Spare me, Admiral. Your well-publicized misgivings aside, we both well know that the Galactic Alliance is taking possession of Centerpoint only to ensure that the Confederacy will never use it as a military asset."

Gavin Darklighter snorted. "So you say, again and again. If I thought that there was even an atom in you that you actually believes any of those words, I might be comforted."

"You'll have to find comfort elsewhere, then, until you are satisfied that I am honest. Perhaps you might derive at least a little from helping to end this war today?"

"Yes, that will have to do. For now."

"I'm glad. Solo out."

"Oh, Colonel, just one more thing before I get underway. Know that once all this is over, I intend to hear your answers on some minor topics."

"Why, with pleasure. Such as?"

"Like I said, minor things: I want to know when you intend to to abandon emergency war powers and step down from your offices, when you intend to allow elections again. Also, why there was a Galactic Alliance Guard bug in my office, why Ben Skywalker has become your personal attack dog, and why your uncle remains conspicuously absent—oh, also, how you justify your many war crimes—Kashyyyk, Bothans, Corellians. Just odds and ends. Until then. Darklighter out."

There was a burst of static, and then the commlink was silent. On the tactical screens around the bridge the first spearhead had been matched by another, striking at the other side of the station. Darklighter's flagship _Peacebringer _formed its tip. That name was appropriate, but not at all for the reasons Darklighter might believe.

_I think, sometimes,_ Caedus whispered, _that the guiding principle of the Force, beneath it all, is irony._

Ben did not respond. Caedus sensed his presence straining under the pressure of incorporating the new minds into the meditation, of gaining thousands of new eyes and limbs and voices. Ben's face shone with sweat, eyes tight shut with the effort of anchoring Fourth Fleet to his will.

Distantly, he sensed Alema loose in the midst of the enemy fleet. She radiated the sort of joy of a child pulling the wings off of a shadowmoth. Her battle meditation, crude and unfocused as it was, was as devastatingly effective as it had been over Kashyyyk. The Corellians were blundering into the killing field, losing precious ships at a rapid rate, fracturing now under the pressure of the two fleets approaching Centerpoint. They were giving ground, and the prize drew ever nearer.

Caedus felt the symphony rising again, birthed within the Force with each orange burst beyond the bridge. And now he could sense the individual sounds, the steady rhythm of Ben's battle meditation, staccato, high tones of laughter from Alema—distantly, the overture of Tenel Ka, the sweetest sound, the breath of sanity, order, the whispered promise that gave him the strength to do what must be done. He did not yet hear his own sound within the symphony, but understood that he was the conductor, a beacon in the Force, struck by the lightning, feeling molten inspiration pour into his tired and broken frame.

Beyond the bridge, Centerpoint station was a lozenge of mottled white the size of his thumbnail, and he knew that soon he would be able to grasp it—reach out and take it.

—

"Colonel Solo."

"Admiral Niathal."

"No unexpected disasters, I presume?"

"No, not yet. Dropships are preparing for launch."

"Overhasty."

"Not overhasty. We are on a strict timetable, and for the time being we have enough spare snubfighter support to screen just about everything down to the hangars. What we really need is to be well on our way to capturing the station before the rest of the Confederacy's fleet arrives and complicates the issue."

"Very well, Colonel. You are, after all, in command of this operation."

"If you'll excuse me, I need to make preparations. We'll speak after I've landed. Good hunting."

"Likewise. Let's hope this scheme of yours is a success."

"Out."

Caedus smiled. Yes, this was his operation. Niathal's implication was clear: if this failed, it wasn't her fault. Unfortunately for her, Caedus did not intend to fail—however, his definition of success was very different from hers.

"Lieutenant Telbut, we're heading down. The bridge is yours."

Darth Caedus turned on his heel, his cloak blossoming behind him like black fire fanned, and Ben smoothly fell in at his side. First, they would visit the _Anakin Solo_'s armory, and collect the weapons they would employ to bring a galactic conflagration to a close. Then they would hitch a ride on a GAG dropship—the first down—and then the real work would begin.

—

Ben Skywalker's crimson lightsaber hummed in one hand, and his GAG blaster pistol smoked in the other. He suppressed a shiver. Had it really only been months since he had last visited this station with Jacen Solo? How could he have been so oblivious then to what his master was becoming? How could he have been so oblivious to what would become of Ben Skywalker, so blind to the passing of the galaxy he had known? How could he have been such a child?

_A shove in the Force snapped thick support cables like strings, and then three Confederate soldiers screamed as they toppled from the walkway suspended above him, falling towards the invisible base of one of Centerpoint's massive durasteel canyons._

Had he really worried about murder—something as simple as choice and action? Had he really been shocked at his first combat kill—as simple as the motion of the foot and the wrist and the blade? It all seemed so distant now. Had he really felt sick at the thought of combat, retched on his knees at the smell of burnt flesh? Could that Ben have ever even conceived of Luke Skywalker's blood caked on his own stained hands?

_Halfway down the empty corridor when a soldier had emerged from a storage closet and surrendered. Ben never broke his stride, though he saw to it that that was the last mistake the man ever made with one bisecting strike._

He had been so very weak, and now the weakness was burned away.

_Ben felt them in the room beyond, nervous presences tingling with terror. They had not been prepared for a thermal detonator, least of all one that Ben masked in the air as it flew. They hadn't known, hadn't even seen it, until the blast, and then they never knew anything again._

In the ashes he had found love. He loved the power that coursed through him, the flashes of prescience that made him invincible before the dozens of Confederate soldiers they together carved through. He loved the sensation of his new lightsaber, blade blood-red, humming a single tone, a tone of ending. He loved the ripples of death within the Force that he left in his wake, testament to his burden, his sacrifice.

_She was a scientist—unarmed, young, maybe twenty, twenty-five. She had begged, but he could not oblige her—the risk of her revealing their passage was unacceptable. He smiled sadly as he approached so close he could feel her breath on his face, as he speared her surgically through the chest, their eyes locked, her heart turned to vapor. Red hair, dead eyes locked on him with unknowing sorrow—he shivered._

He even loved the soldiers and scientists he killed, loved them as conduits of his victory, loved them as necessary and vital sacrifices made towards a new and unprecedented peace.

_The next room had been a firefight. Simple enough. The first three had eaten their own blaster bolts, deflected into their unarmored chests as he scrambled from the door to cover. After that, two blind shots took two more. But that was a misnomer. With the Force, there was no such thing as a blind shot._

More than love. In the ashes of the Ben Skywalker that had been, the new one had found greatness.

_The rest had tried to run, and he had followed. He caught them, one by one, as they hid or fought or surrendered, never breaking his stride as he ran, cut, ran._

There was a greatness within him now, a greatness manifest in every easily deflected blaster bolt, every thermal detonator that tore flesh, every head that left every neck, split by a hard line of cool flame, all serving a greater destiny, an ascension.

_He kept running for a long time, now moving well ahead of the tactically retreating soldiers trying to prevent the GAG troopers far behind him from breaching deep into the Station. He ran through massive rooms full of inscrutable alien technology, along walkways that hung over the seeming nothingness, scaling the shafts of deactivated service elevators with Force-assisted bounds._

The soldiers and scientists he killed were conduits of his greatness, every step he took a testament towards his victory, every moment he yet lived and moved forward a message to a defiant galaxy to kneel.

_He was prone in a horizontal maintenance shaft, crawling through the darkness, following a path he knew only from memorized schematics. Eventually he came to a grate through which he could see dozens of scientists working furiously at one of Centerpoint's ancient air-scrubbers. His blowpipe slid into his hand from his sleeve. He loaded a dart, inhaled, blew through the grate at a scientist's exposed neck, crawled until he could no longer hear their panicked screams echoing._

There was joy in it, a clean sacred joy, and he wanted to laugh, to laugh and never stop, to laugh and kill and purge the galaxy clean of every impurity, every step a testament to his living truth.

_He emerged from the shaft silently, his entrance concealed by hastily-installed Corellian instruments. Beyond, scientists monitored the status of the Glowpoint. There was only one exit, and Ben held the sliding door shut in a vice grip with the Force as he rose, igniting his lightsaber._

There was no bottom to the Force, no limit to what he could now become, nothing that could keep him from the center of Centerpoint, where he would tip the galaxy towards perfection.

_He breathed, slowly, evenly, as he stood surrounded by bodies, heart pounding with the exertion and the inspiration flowing through him, in sync with the Force in all its churning turmoil. He felt a gloved hand on his shoulder, and felt that within the bones were all broken._

_You see, _Darth Caedus whispered, and Ben Skywalker remembered his master, who had followed behind, watching, _that there is beauty in what we do. There is providence in a fall, poetry in death, victory in loss. Everything I tell you is a lie._

Ben understood, and he continued forward, cleaving, Caedus behind in silent observation, wondering about truth and lies and destiny.

—

Turr Phennir watched the curving gray shapes of hyperspace and resisted the urge to frown. That would send a bad message to the crew. Instead, he stood rigid, face impassive, betraying none of the anxiety that hit him in waves.

He felt old, and that was a feeling he absolutely could not betray to the bridge full of fresh Corellian faces that watched him. Worse still, he felt unprepared—and furious that after fifty years of military service, he could still make such fatally faulty estimations.

Namely, he had underestimated the boy Solo. Badly. He had fallen into Solo's trap, and the consequences of his mistake remained worryingly unclear. Hours ago, he had arrived at Bothawui to deflect a strike by Nek Bwua'tu's combined First and Sixth Fleets, only to watch them jump out as he arrived. Their vector led straight into Corellia, and he was in hot pursuit, but he had a sinking feeling that he would arrive too late.

If the Galactic Alliance was striking Corellia, Phennir knew what Solo had in mind, and it was Centerpoint. And if he was bold enough to attack Centerpoint, then he must have found the ships necessary to mount such an assault.

And now the sinking feeling in the pit of his gut grew greater. The only place he could have possibly gotten so many ships in so short a time span from was Hapes. And if Hapes was back in the Galactic Alliance camp, then all bets were off.

"Two minutes," an ensign shouted, and Phennir nodded crisply, running a hand through his thinning hair in a manner designed to show poise, readiness, clarity of vision, bringing the handsome sharp lines of his face into stark relief under the stark light of the bridge.

His mind turned furiously. But every thought slid, inescapably, towards the unknowns. Did Solo know one of the Confederacy's most closely kept secrets: that Centerpoint was now once again operational? If he did, was he mad enough to fire the thing, if he was even able? Where? How many ships did he have? Had the Galactic Alliance staked everything on one massive killing blow?

Were the scientists and soldiers staffed on Centerpoint stupid enough to fire it in retaliation? Would they—could they—destroy it rather than see it fall into the hands of the Galactic Alliance?

Too many unknowns. Too many possibilities ending in a world destroyed, in a war lost. Altogether too many unknowns that favored Colonel Jacen Solo.

Yes, the boy had designed this trap of his well. _Were he not consummate scum,_ Turr Phennir thought, _I might almost admire it._

"Three, two, one—"

The gray peeled back into limitless black, pinpoints of life, the reds and greens of lasers, the blue of ion cannon fire, the oranges and reds of explosions, and Phennir's flagship shuddered under an immediate, focused barrage of turbolaser fire. Phennir remained bolt upright as the deck beneath him quaked. He barked orders and he read the tactical displays, his voice remaining cool and firm, confident.

"All ships engage. Pull them away from Centerpoint at all costs. Dropships are priority targets. Lieutenant, open a comm channel with the Station."

His eyes darted deftly across the developing tactical display. Yes, he was hard pressed to imagine a worse scenario. The entire combined Galactic Alliance and Hapan fleets were present here—Hapan ships formed the heart of the Alliance thrust, and Solo's flagship formed the tip. Around Centerpoint, the rest of the Galactic Alliance fleet had arrayed like individual fingers curling into a fist, with only a few disabled or soon-to-be disabled Confederate ships left to defend the station, powerless to halt the locust swarm of descending dropships. By any conceivable metric, Phennir was badly outnumbered and much too late, and any attempts now to pull the Alliance away from the station would only forestall the inevitable.

"Centerpoint control is hailing us," said an ensign.

"Put them through."

"General Phennir, do you copy?" Said a thick Corellian accent through the comm. Phennir did not ask for name or rank. He did not particularly care—he had more important things on his mind.

"Affirmative. Start talking. When did they arrive?"

"Their first fleet jumped in a little more than three hours ago. They've been supplemented by irregular reinforcements since."

"But no attempts to disable the station?"

"None, sir. They definitely want it intact."

"What's the status on the boarders?"

"Mostly Galactic Alliance Guard, I'm told—absolute butchers. They're still landing all over the station, but the first waves have made good progress inward. I can't say how much time it will take for them to reach us here in the control room. I'd estimate an hour, perhaps two."

"Are you sure? Positively?"

"What do you want from me, General? I'm as sure as anyone can be of his own time of death."

Phennir ignored the creeping tone of insolence, desperation, in the man's voice. He had a splitting headache, and he had a feeling it would get much worse. "You need to listen. The dropships mean that the Alliance intends to take the station intact, maybe to use it. You need to redouble your efforts to keep them away from the control room."

"But most of us are scientists, General, not soldiers, and a skeleton crew at that! We can't hold this place against who even knows how many commandos."

"I am aware of that, thank you. I don't expect you to do any more than slow them down."

"Until when?"

"Until the situation changes."

"But we can change this situation right now. If I had your authorization to use the codes I could give the command and Centerpoint could be fired on any target you specify in minutes—we could fire it off into deep space, harmlessly. We could make them would stand down, we would buy time."

Phennir's tone turned icy. "Leave strategy to the strategists. Listen to me. They _want_us to fire Centerpoint, you utter fool. It's a loser's gambit, a threat that can only be totally empty or completely mad—there are no legitimate military targets for us to choose from that aren't already here, and they know it. Notice, if you would, that literally every Galactic Alliance military vessel of any significance is concentrated here, their entire fighting force, too close for Centerpoint to target without cataclysmic consequences for the Station and the planets around it. We could target worlds, but recall from the days of the Empire—if you were even alive—that using superweapons on worlds with civilian populations is a sure way to turn the galaxy against your cause. That bluff has been called."

"But, sir—sir, we can't just sit here and let them have Centerpoint."

"I don't intend to let that happen. Tell me, how much damage can you inflict to Centerpoint's firing and targeting mechanisms in the, say, hour before they reach you?"

"But—"

"No. Answer. Neither of us have time to waste, and unless you want to personally deliver the station to Jacen Solo himself in pristine condition, you need to tell me what our options are."

A sigh. Phennir's headache mounted another step. "An hour? Anything we do will be a stopgap. We can't disable the station that quickly, too many redundant mechanisms and too few men to destroy them, not when they've likely already taken parts of the station we would need to reach, not when large parts of the station have been exposed to vacuum by GAG vacsuit teams on the surface. We can seal the blast doors, destroy consoles, shut down elevators—and not much else."

"We need something better," Phennir said.

"There's nothing. Unless—well, I can upload targeting information, and your fleet can attack the station's vital systems from the outside, blast your way through. But I don't think the station would be salvageable—it would be the end of Centerpoint as a weapon."

Now it was Phennir's turn to sigh. _Damn you, Solo, _he thought, _damn you back into whatever one of the hells you crawled out from. _Whatever he chose, Centerpoint was lost to the Confederate cause. The best he could do was keep it out of that demon's grasp. "Transmit the coordinates. You have a direct line. Keep me updated if the situation changes."

"Yes, General, and g—"

He never finished. His voice was drowned out by a characteristic snap-hiss, the hum of a lightsaber strike, a shout that ended in a gurgle, the faint sound of static interference under flesh hitting durasteel.

Phennir's dread mounted the final step. His headache reached a peak. The comm hissed white noise for a long moment.

"Hello, General Phennir," said a voice that unmistakably belonged to Jacen Solo. "The situation has changed."


	15. Wheel

**XIV. WHEEL**

_One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth for ever... The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose... The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits... All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.  
Ecclesiastes_

—

"Hello, General Phennir," said a voice that unmistakably belonged to Jacen Solo. "The situation has changed."

"Colonel Solo," Phennir said, taking a deep breath. This day had just become so much worse. A few minutes ago, he wouldn't have believed that could be possible. But here he was, and there was Jacen Solo, speaking to him from the control room of the galaxy's last fully operational superweapon.

"The very same, Phennir. Let's save the witty banter, we're both about to be very busy men. I will accept your unconditional surrender now."

Turr Phennir blinked.

"I will accept your unconditional surrender, General, because this station is now under the control of the Galactic Alliance Guard. We both know what that means. You will agree with me that this war is well and truly over, or I will see to it that none of your confederates are left to argue the point."

A bluff—it had to be. Solo scarcely needed to start firing off a superweapon when he was already on the cusp of victory. Phennir chose to call him on it.

"You wouldn't dare, Solo. You're much smarter than that. And even if you weren't, you don't have our firing codes."

On the other end of the comm, Phennir heard the characteristic three-tone beep of a personal commlink. Solo evidently ignored it.

"You vastly underestimate me and the resources I command. I can and would dare. This ends today. I will see to it."

The boy was surely mad, but he couldn't be _that _mad.

"It would be political suicide. It would be the worst war crime since Alderaan."

"Is that so?" replied Jacen Solo, an edge creeping into his voice. "Do you think so? Just how much are you willing to stake on my conviction by a Galactic Alliance war crimes tribunal?"

That edge gave Phennir pause—and even worse, Solo was probably right on the latter count—but he had to ignore that. This had to be a bluff; the timing wasn't right, even if he had somehow acquired Centerpoint firing codes that were among the Confederacy's most closely held secrets. Solo couldn't have reached the core yet, not on foot, fighting for every inch—and even if he had, he still wouldn't fire Centerpoint. Although he was surely morally bankrupt, undeniably an amateur politician grasping at a general's glory, he wasn't stupid. This incongruity troubled Phennir. Dismal as the situation was—whether Solo bluffed or no—for now, he had few options but to stall.

"The Confederacy will not surrender to the likes of you, Solo. This war is just beginning."

"General Phennir, I am not a politician, and I am not a general—I am someone who has intent and means to end this war within the next half hour. I am at the controls of the only remaining superweapon in the galaxy. I have my ways."

On Solo's end, the comm beeped once again. "Ech. Excuse me a moment, General. Urgent. Have to take this. Lieutenant Skywalker, give him our terms. You'll want to become familiar with them, Phennir—I am certain that you will be accepting them shortly."

"We call for the complete and unconditional surrender of all naval and planetary forces and constituent system governments under the control of the Corellian Confederacy to the sovereign authority of the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances, effective immediately," Ben Skywalker began, his voice clear and cold.

—

Ben droned term after term easily to Phennir as Darth Caedus stepped over the still-smoking body of the station's commander. He unclipped the beeping commlink from his belt. He held it to his lips and spoke as he paced around the control room, surveying.

"Tahiri, this is a really bad time, emergency comm or no. I'm going to have to get back to you. Unless this is life or death-"

"Endor," Tahiri gasped in response. "All of the Jedi are on Endor."

Darth Caedus stopped. His eyes widened—the lurch in his stomach recalled tight turns in a snubfighter with blown-out inertial compensators. Ben betrayed nothing to Phennir, but Caedus felt the shock rippling off of his apprentice, too.

Endor, she had said. The word Endor had just changed _everything_.

"You're certain?" Caedus asked, his mouth dry. "Oh, stang. You're certain."

"I've seen them. I've talked to them. Jacen, all of them are on Endor."

Caedus felt his heart pounding, took a snap glance at the future and saw images of fire as his mind began to whirl.

"All of them are on Endor," he repeated.

"Everybody's been recalled."

He had not anticipated this—there had been no visions, no hints—nowhere in his plans had he accounted for the discovery of the Jedi's sanctuary so soon, at so absolutely opportune of a moment. His mind raced. Clearly, the previous plan had to be abandoned in light of this new information. No more stringing Phennir along until Alema played her part—Caedus's Force intuition and his own strategic calculus were practically screaming out how perfect it would be to destroy Endor with his new weapon at that very moment, blamelessly, and he had the overwhelming sense that with each passing moment the impossibly perfect opportunity would slip from his reach if he did not act. All that stood between him and the perfection of it all were some minor timeline issues—all too easy to sweep aside, bluff for bluff.

"Your sister's here, Jacen. Your mother, too. Okay, I don't know where your father is—not on the planet, I don't think, maybe working on securing the next refuge. There's been a Convocation—the council has chosen Horn for Grandmaster in Kyp's... absence."

Caedus took a deep breath, calming himself with some effort. It did not even take prescience to see the potential that was coiled in these seconds, these first priceless moments at the helm of the galaxy's last superweapon—now, suddenly, with a perfect target, and an excellent alibi. The Jedi's exile world was their most closely held secret—only a handful of non-Jedi knew, and they would never be able to prove a thing without demonstrating their complicity in aiding Jedi terrorists, thereby delivering themselves into his hands.

"I did just as you said, Jacen, and I think they believed the story. About wanting to start over. They need all the warm bodies they can get, believe me, so they aren't asking too many questions."

"Where are you now?" Caedus asked, careful to keep his voice even.

There was precious little time to decide what to do with Tahiri. She had proven a very useful tool, but perhaps she had reached the peak of her usefulness—she was too weak to walk his path, too unstable to rely on without constant maintenance. Flow walking consumed time and strength—to say nothing of the more subtle manipulation of her mind that he had lately employed—but most of all he grew tired of the face of his brother. She knew a great deal about Durron and Zekk, about GAG. About Ben. About Jacen Solo. And if the growing plan in his mind came to fruition he would no longer need an informant within the Jedi Order, because there would be no more Jedi Order. Still, she was a childhood friend, and a fellow warrior, and he was not completely unsympathetic to her pain, not altogether ungrateful for her aid to his cause, coerced or not. Ben interjected disbelief into their shared mental connection—to him this decision seemed utterly trivial.

"I'm in orbit, snuck out in a Stealth-X. There's a comm blackout on-planet so nothing can be traced, no major generators so long-range scans won't pick anything up. Don't worry, I was careful. I've been under surveillance, but they're so undermanned that they can't watch me all day. I'll be planetside again before anyone notices I was gone."

Ben could only rattle on so much longer, and there was really not a moment to waste—out there, in the battlefield, Alema was moving into position behind enemy lines. He exhaled, and decided. Yet another sacrifice for the cause. Not the first life he had used today, nor even remotely the last.

"Okay. Thank you, Tahiri. I think you know how much this means to me."

"Yeah. When do we see Anakin again, Jacen?"

"Just as soon as the Jedi let you offworld again," he said. "I'll have to sit on the Endor information, make a plan with the Admirals. Still, this is huge. I'm in your debt."

"Well, don't take too long. They won't be here forever. And you know how to repay me. I'm going to head back down."

"Call me tomorrow. I'll be waiting."

"Jacen?"

"Tahiri."

"I want to go flow walking on Yavin IV, I think. I want to see the academy again."

"That would be nice. You've earned it with this one. Take care about compromising yourself with X-Wing take-offs. I'll see you soon."

"Affirmative," she said. "T—thanks, Jacen. Out."

The connection fell silent, and Caedus exhaled, then turned back towards the massive, arcane targeting mechanisms of Centerpoint Station, Ben at the base. He couldn't let what he had just done distract him now, at this enormous and unforeseen galactic shatterpoint.

Time seemed to keep slowing down. This was like nothing he had ever envisioned, plotted, or schemed. Together in mental union with Ben he thought furiously, tracing out contingencies and consequences—yes, even a fairly flimsy story would be enough, because in a few days there would be very few indeed who would dare to contest the events that had taken place.

_Choose, and act._

He chose.

"Lieutenant Skywalker, has General Phennir accepted our terms?" he asked.

"No, Colonel Solo," Ben replied, clipped, military, icy. "I don't think he's listening."

It was important to make sure that this conversation, should it ever become necessary to declassify it even slightly, would sync with what was about to transpire. He had to play his part. This was the time to take the greatest of care.

"Well, General Phennir," Caedus said, "You've called my bluff. History will judge the wisdom of that decision. We'll be back in touch with you shortly, and I expect it will be in order to accept your surrender."

Ben cut the line before Phennir could respond—messy, but it would have to suffice—and then they were alone again in the control room.

Caedus met Ben's gaze, but could not read it. Ben was becoming better at hiding his emotions away, at building mental shields. He had deep ashen bags under his brooding eyes, had apparently not noticed the streaks and splatters of blood and char across his face and uniform, accumulated during the long furious race towards Centerpoint's heart, his hair matted with sweat and dirt.

The plan had already gestated in their silent mental connection—neither could find a flaw, and so it was good enough to go forward.

Caedus drew close, and he murmured:

"Apprentice, today we will destroy a world, slice away the last remnants our pasts with one clean cut, end this war, inaugurate a new era. This is how it starts. This is what a hundred generations of Sith have battled for. The cost is dear."

"But we strengthen ourselves through sacrifice, and there is no loss but gain," Ben answered. Caedus saw a glint of joy in his gold-tinged eyes.

Caedus thumbed his commlink back to life with a soft hiss of static.

"_Anakin Solo_, do you copy?"

"Yes, Colonel."

"We're near the control room, but the blast doors have been locked down around us and we can't get to an alternate route. We're burning our way through, but we may not be fast enough. The scientists inside are threatening to fire Centerpoint if the fleet does not jump out of system immediately."

"We copy. O—orders?" the voice asked, audibly dazed.

"Hold positions. We do not negotiate with terrorists. Let the admirals know. All ships brace, all snubs pull back."

"Affirmative."

Ben was already manipulating the console's controls, and distantly Caedus heard the _thunks _of the blast doors slamming shut. Ben moved across the room, deftly stepping over the bodies of the scientists who would be blamed for what was about to take place. He ignited his lightsaber, and began to carefully burn his way through the thick durasteel blast door—from the wrong side, of course, but no one need ever know that. Caedus moved to erase the station's holocam and communication databanks, cease any further recording, and found that Ben had already done both.

Caedus smiled fondly.

He took the controls in his gloved hands, punched in the hyperspace coordinates for the forest moon of Endor. He knew them by heart—he had memorized them in his youth, like those of all the worlds in the _Millenium Falcon_'s long and storied flightlog.

He rolled his shoulders, feeling the new burden on his frame. There was the breath of victory in the aching, a sense of finality that made this last task easier to bear. He still hadn't fully recovered from the duel with Luke Skywalker, still felt the scarlet fractures where so many bones had snapped—ribs, shoulders, arms, hands, fingers, even now confirming that the forest moon of Endor was the intended target of Centerpoint Station.

There would be no farewells, now, no last confrontation with Jaina, his mother, the dozens of other Jedi he was about to obliterate in a single immense gravatic flux. No last condemnations, no final rebukes. He was glad for that. They would never even know what hit them.

This was no Order 66—it was something considerably better.

Perhaps this was coming full circle. Caedus was unsure if this was reaching rock bottom, or mounting another rung on his long apotheosis. Perhaps this was what it meant to take up the true mantle of his grandfather—or his grandfather's master. But in a very real way they had only begun the end of their reign with the destruction of a world. For Darth Caedus, it would be the opposite—only the end of the beginning. It was strange, that this was to be the apex at last of a thousand generations of Sith, the deepest betrayal of the Jedi he had been. It was a new burden, a massive one, all new blood on hands already deeply stained: the sacrifice of a whole world. This was the dawn of a new era for the galaxy that would be his to mold. By the time the consequences of these events had fully spun out, there would be a precious few left willing or able to dispute it.

Once, lifetimes ago, when Darth Caedus had been a different man, he had tried to keep his brother from using this station on the Yuuzhan Vong. His brother had listened. What fools they had been.

Once, weeks ago, his wife would have damned him for doing this. Now he would return to her in the midst of all her preparations for what was to come on Coruscant and try to tell her of the unspeakable enormity of the crime, and she would nod, and embrace him, and share the burden.

He worked through layers of confirmation, well pleased with the Guard for having obtained the all-important, incredibly classified codes necessary to undertake this act, although in the planning stages they had been only a worst-case option in the event of some spectacular failure during the attack. The Guard, chief among his most loyal and useful assets, would get its due reward. He hoisted the relevant piece of the dead man at his feet with the Force and pressed his still-warm fingers against the biometric sensor. The console acquiesced, monitors all around him beginning to stream targeting and diagnostic data, and the ambient noise of the station began to hum in a new tone—far beneath his feet, the Glowpoint, which powered the station, was beginning to expand in earnest. The lights flickered. The order was locked in, and there was no going back.

Jaina. His mother. The Jedi he had fought alongside for so many years, the Jedi he had grown up with, Tahiri and so many more. The planet where the New Republic had been born, the planet where the Sith had tried and failed to cement an eternal rule, the planet where his pregnant mother had once witnessed a vision that now seemed terribly prophetic.

_Palpatine, gripping at the twins in her belly, exalting._

_"Mine."_

"_Anakin Solo_, Centerpoint's firing. I'll update when I know more."

"Copy," the voice said. Telbut did not ask for further orders. Perhaps he realized that there were none that could be given—that there was nothing left to be done.

"The Confederacy will pay for this," Darth Caedus said.

Still, there was one last trifle to square away—what had been key and crescendo in the original plan, but in light of Endor now seemed like only a prelude to something greater. By no means would his rule be secure without a loyal military at his back, and so precautions had to be taken—the disloyal, the old guard, had to be purged from the Galactic Alliance Navy to prevent further complications from arising in events soon to follow the end of the battle here.

And the Galactic Alliance Guard, via means that were awesomely illegal even by the Guard's dubious standards, had happened to come into possession of the manufacturer's override codes needed to disable shields and targeting systems in most of the ships of the assembled Alliance fleet during the preparation for the operation. The signals were untraceable when broadcast from his tiny personal commlink in the radio din of battle—and, better still, easily framed as an act of covert Confederate sabotage that would justify any further purging he might have to undertake later on.

_Go,_he whispered into the beaming dark howl of a presence that was Alema Rar, loose in the midst the Confederate fleet. She gave him a mental nod, and the entire clockwork machinery of ascendance was in motion, ordered and lovely and whispering truth.

He keyed in the final confirmation code on the console before him, his hands shaking only slightly. He was thankful, almost—he would be spared seeing their faces, hearing them tell him what he had become. He felt cold, inside. The whole station slowly began to rattle, like pressure was building up deep inside, klaxons sounding and the air within the station convulsing in great heaving motions—like some horrible crossbreed of a Yuuzhan Vong worldship and a Death Star. Part of it was only in his head, he was sure, but it seemed to him as if the station should have been rattling itself into pieces. It hadn't been nearly so intense, last time he had been on the station as it fired—but that was ages and ages ago, and a great deal had changed. He found he had to struggle to stand as the pressure mounted, quaking and roaring as the glowpoint expanded to its full size, and then finally Centerpoint exhaled with the boundless fury of a star's birth.

The Sanctuary Moon.

The Jedi Order.

The Solo family.

Jaina.

All—impossibly, inevitably, irrevocably—gone.

The last thing that he thought before blackness welled up and overcame him, the last solace, was that Tenel Ka would understand, and she would be waiting for him on the other side.

—

He wanted speed. And balance. But mostly speed. The battlefield was a blur, the starscape twisting as he swung his A-Wing in a sharp turn that slammed him into his flightseat, inertial compensator struggling to keep him from falling into unconsciousness. But he wasn't going fast enough. He cut power for his shields down to nothing. Not important. Minimal life support, just enough, it wouldn't have to last all that long. Thrusters were all he needed: thrusters and hands on the yoke, guiding his fighter towards destiny.

There were voices in the cockpit that assailed him. Sometimes there was a fragment of a scream, then static, then nothing. Sometimes voices asked him what he was doing, if he was insane, if he was deserting, if he just wanted to die. Voices of people that he had known. Voices of friends and superiors. There were voices that said that Centerpoint Station was giving off unusual readings, and said to get far, far away.

He ignored them. They were lesser voices, voices that called out to something that he no longer was. The new voice demanded his attention. That voice wanted speed. And balance.

Balance. He was an agent of a fundamental and abiding equity. The Galactic Alliance would pay a price for what they had done today. They would pay a price for destroying the rest of his squadron. Dimly he remembered how his hands had shaken, how his vision had fogged, how he had been unable to save any of them. They all died, and he remained, floating through a warzone in an ancient, Rebellion-era A-Wing. He hadn't even wanted to fight in this waste of a war. Another conscript for the great galactic meat grinder of the day, he thought, curious that he was calm when he knew abstractly that he should have been so full of rage.

All that was far away, though, a fog that had receded. He felt alert now, was consumed in flashes of comprehension telling him when to juke precious instants before his sensors could warn him of danger. And he was gaining speed, hurtling past the massive scrapfield that had once been a Confederate fleet, past derelict snubfighters that had been brothers in arms, past the antique cruiser that had been his home, but now gushed fire and little writhing figures into the void—away from Centerpoint. The Galactic Alliance could have it, but they would pay a dear price.

He was a single man in a solitary A-Wing, hurtling at incredible speed towards the combined might of several Galactic Alliance fleets.

And that was of no importance to him. Size mattered not, only weight of debt yet to be paid.

Somewhere, he knew that he should have been dead by now, should have been easy pickings for the gunners of the capital ships as he made his laser-straight approach. His sensors should have been feeding data about the shields of the ship he approached, but there were no shields that would stay him, no shields that could stay him.

He knew that these things were so, because all things were in balance.

The fire from the capital ships was sporadic, halting—most went far wide. He realized that beneath the voices of Confederate pilots dying there were none of the bleating tones of missile or turbolaser lock that he had somehow expected, nothing but the scream of his engines, pulsing with his pounding heartbeat.

The voice, the true voice, became louder, and he shivered with the pleasure of hearing it, feeling it like tongues of fire licking his spine. It resounded in clean tones like crystal ringing, water in his parched throat. The more he listened, the greater it grew, reaching deeper into him, reaching farther into the battle that surrounded him, his vision clearing as he hurtled forward.

Everything was so much clearer now, action and reaction, crime and punishment, all guided by the invisible will of the galaxy righting itself. He was not the only soul hurtling towards greatness, he knew. Balance had chosen Her disciples, decided on the ships that would do Her work: punishing the Galactic Alliance for its crimes. Fixing it. All of it.

He pulled the stick back, towards his chest, looping and savoring the black that nearly overtook his vision as his target spun from his view, stars whipping past. Centerpoint was visible for just an instant, illuminated by an enormous blast that he saw for but an instant, and then he was on his vector again, juking to dodge manually targeted turbolaser barrages, then he was under the ship and in a moment past, up, blinded by the blue inferno of the engines, down again with one last roar, tracing an arc like the descent of an axe's tip at an execution, the bridge and the nape of the neck, consummating balance, consummating his own death for the greater purpose of a galaxy that would be one step closer to completion. The last moments were very very slow, though he was moving with such speed that he knew he would pierce the blocky bridge area of the Star Destroyer entirely and emerge on the opposite side in burning pieces moving faster than human capacity to comprehend, chemically transformed into a small but glorious component of ash and vapor within the conflagration of manged steel and hellfire—even so, in that last glorious fraction of a second, which to him lasted much longer, he was sure he could see the looming face of Niathal, her horrible squid features contorted in a universal shape of uncomprehending horror.

The Galactic Alliance might make Corellia kneel, but Cha Niathal would not live to see it. A new age would dawn from this wreckage, from these lives ripped away—fallow soil after the lightning and the fire.

He connected with the bridge of the _Galactic Voyager_, connected the blade that was his ship with the tender neck of everything evil that had ever been, and the plumes of fire he saw for the instant before nothing curved and arced and licked with primal beauty, the voice whispering:

_Yes at last, yes a final payment due at last Yes, a time for rising at last, after we have waited so very long._

—

"Jacen?"

Darth Caedus opened his eyes, and wondered dully if he had finally died. Nothing hurt—that was extremely unusual. A great expanse of gray in all directions, endless, empty, greeted him. Desolate, he realized as he turned his head, except for the unmistakable shape of his sister. She wore brown Jedi robes, and she watched him with watery eyes.

He reflexively reached for his lightsaber, but it was gone—felt for his blowdarts, his vibroblade, his holdout blaster, and found them all absent—extremely unusual indeed. He was wearing a Jedi's plain brown robes, he then realized, and not his GAG uniform. Funny—he had been very prepared to die without wearing these familiar garments again.

"What is this?" He asked. His sister approached, hovered over him, offered him a beckoning hand that he took after a moment of disbelief. She helped him stand, and he met her gaze dubiously. She didn't let go of his hands. She held him close. He wanted to look away. She wouldn't let him.

"I think this is us. A twin bond can be suppressed, but never really erased. I think it's back, because you and I are connected more powerfully than ever. Maybe this is because it's been stifled for so long, maybe because we're in a mutual moment of extreme duress," she said, "But I'd like to think it's your conscience giving one last kick."

"You're supposed to be dead."

She shrugged. "Yes, that's true. If I'm not, I will be soon. I think the instant before death qualifies as a moment of extreme duress. What really matters is that we're both here, now."

He looked at his sister. She was flickering, spectral. She reminded him of Mara Jade's ghost. This, among other things, made him uneasy.

"So you know what I've done."

"Yes. I know all of it."

"And you know that I won't apologize. I've done awful things, but always necessary. The only way."

"Ah, Jacen. That's what you think."

"Jacen is no longer my name."

She looked into his eyes, inquiring. It had been a long time since she had been so open to him, and he to her.

"Is that so?"

"Your brothers died on Myrkr."

"No, I don't think so. We believed that, but it was just a convenient lie. You are my brother, even after everything you've done, even given how you've mutilated yourself. To believe anything less than that is letting you off way too easy."

"Onimi believed we were the avatars of Yun-Harla and Yun-Shuno."

"Yeah. And maybe we were. But I've run out of tricks, Jacen." A tear glistened on her cheek. She smiled. "And you've run out of shame."

"Guilty as charged." Caedus answered, with a sad grin. "I had been relieved, you know, that I wouldn't have to do this—stare you down. That I could press a button, and all of you would just die."

"It was never supposed to happen like this."

"No one can escape fate, Jaina. It delivers us all to our unknowable ends. We play our parts."

"Fate is an easy excuse."

"Fate has laid our line low from the beginning."

"No, that's another easy lie. Every time, it's been our own weakness. Our grandfather, Luke, in the end, you—the history of this family is the history of taking the easy way out."

"This hasn't been easy for me, Jaina. Not for a moment. You know that."

"But Jacen, it _was _easy—relative to another course of action you could have taken, like trying to end the war and protect your daughter while remaining a decent human being. All of you gave into temptation, chose evil because it was the easiest way to get what you wanted. Fate has nothing to do with it, no matter what you think you see in those threads. There's a reason why you never saw any of this coming. Even me—I should have found you and stopped you myself. But I gave into fear. I waited, and occupied myself with childish things, and I guess I hoped someone else would kill you and spare me the pain of having to do it. Somehow, I never thought you would get us first. Skywalkers are regular people, Jacen, just as flawed, only everyone else has to suffer so much more for our screw-ups."

"Do you think Aunt Mara was right about me? Does my sister think that I am worse than Palpatine?"

Jaina frowned. "Yes." She shrugged. "No. You're just as ambitious, just as ruthless. You might even be stronger, now, with all you've learned. If you aren't already, you certainly will be in time. You have the same disdain for anything that stands in the way of power, and most of the same terrible ideas about what people are and how they can be controlled. At the same time I think, somewhere, you really do still believe what you say about peace—contradictory as that may be—about doing what you are doing for Allana. We both know that Tenel Ka would have skewered you where you stood if she hadn't found something worth keeping in you—if she hadn't seen that beneath it all you are still the man she loves—if she hadn't seen some kind of terrible but complete logic in what you've done. It's not much, but it's a scrap of white. Not enough to weave a banner with, but maybe enough to separate you from the dogs that were your predecessors. That scrap of white could still save you."

It was strange to hear his sister mention Allana so casually—strange to know her mind as she knew his, so that this conversation was really more of a shifting equilibrium, halves of a single mind turning questions over within itself. He did not know how to feel about the fact that he would never experience this again.

"You've spilled a lot of blood in Allana's name, Jacen. And not just Confederate or Jedi blood, either."

"And I pray that in the galaxy I'm making, she will never have to know."

"It would break her heart. She's a beautiful girl, Jacen, and she's going to love you just as dearly as you love her."

He nodded, watching the nothingness, trying to ignore the strength of her unrelenting gaze.

"Did we fail you? As a family?" Jaina asked.

"Maybe. Maybe if our bond hadn't grown so weak, you would have been able to turn me back."

Jaina laughed. "I couldn't turn you back from anything. You've always been even more stubborn than Anakin, in your own way."

The name seemed to reverberate in the silence.

"If only," Jacen said.

He remembered the reckless grin of his brother, his laugh, his presence, clean and bright and new, coiled with potential. He remembered Anakin's corpse.

"If only," Jaina agreed. "I am sorry that the two of us grew so far apart. The blame for that is mine as much as it is yours. I was afraid of what you became on Yuuzhan'tar. And yet, now that I really _know _what you went through, I know those lessons were far from wrong. You've followed them somewhere terrible, but if we had tried harder to understand, and help you through it—it could have really been the seed of a new way. A better way. I was so afraid for such a long time."

"There are so many things that could have been."

"I was supposed to fall in love. Continue the line, I guess."

"I'm sorry about Zekk."

"I took his death hard. I felt it—what he became. But now that I know what happened, it's not so awful. He beat Ben at his own game, in the end."

"Pain is a lesson that only the greatest come to truly comprehend. I was proud to hear of it. Truly."

"I was supposed to be the Sword of the Jedi, too, weapon to cleave darkness, but I never learned what pain had to offer."

Jacen smiled. "No, you are the Sword of the Jedi, sister, at this very moment, make no mistake. Here, now, you're the avatar of the Jedi Order, striking deep in the heart of the Sith one final time. Right now, you seem to me to be the very embodiment of a sword, all beauty and agony run together."

She smiled at this, too. "You might say that that's fate."

"Or, perhaps, just one last good decision in a galaxy full of people making bad ones."

Tears were running down her face, but she stood, stoic, never taking her eyes off of his, squeezing his hands tightly. "You have no apology to give, Jacen, and I have no forgiveness to extend."

"Those are unnecessary. Understanding is enough. Vergere said that love is only the recognition that two are one."

"Then I love you, in spite of your mistakes. What you have done and what you will do."

"And I love you, because I see in you now what I could have been."

"And now I go to join the Force, along with mom and the rest. I wish I could say I had no regrets. You go on, to begin your new era."

"Yes. It begins in the moment that you end."

"Then this is how I say goodbye to my little brother. My twin, my killer, Dark Lord of the Sith."

"I suppose so. I am all that, and I will be more yet."

"Then goodbye, Jacen. Though you bear many names, remember us."

"Goodbye, Jaina. Give my regards to our brother. And the rest. I suppose that I won't see any of you again, the way I'm going. Tell them—tell them that I have missed them. And I miss them still."

He took her hand and held it up, soft and warm and perfect against his ashen skin, hands clasping against the gray. He kissed it. She seemed to pulse with an inner light even as her spectral form flickered, and their eyes met for the last time, exchanging an intimate history of sorrow.

This was more than cutting away part of himself. Leaving here would be like cleaving his consciousness in two. A fitting last step, and a fitting way to say goodbye.

"Remember," Jaina whispered. "It's a scrap of white. It might save you."

Then the pain returned in a spike, peaking beyond capacity to comprehend, and he knew that his family was at last really and truly gone, atomized by his own broken hand. He had thought himself completely closed off from the presences of his former friends and family, but that was not true, not at all—the bonds had faded, but never disappeared, and now they returned in a thundering stampede, as he experienced by proxy the unique agony of each individual he had once loved and now killed. He howled and howled into the nothingness, wordlessly mouthing I'm sorry I'm sorry to souls already passing and passed, just at the edge of his capacity to comprehend—like the Embrace had been the first time, again.

He felt it all, vividly, each instant death as Centerpoint cleaved the forest moon in twain, took the fragile green orb and exerted such massive gravitational pressures on it that it simply shuddered, all at once collapsing in on itself, and then instantaneously burst into a massive firestorm that incinerated the atmosphere in nanoseconds, shattered the crust and mantle and core in a few nanoseconds more, then blew it all outwards in calamitous molten hellfire. He lingered in an eternity of scarlet, the wisps of consciousness and Force presence snuffed out, hanging like smoke, constricting until finally he could not breathe for the density of the life that had been destroyed in the betrayal that he had brought about. The black swelled up to meet him, engulfed him, and the gray land was gone, receding fast down a long dark tunnel.

—

Jacen gasped, and then he was on Centerpoint again, tasting blood. He was still standing, and he could hear Ben working at the blast door. It must have only been a moment, he told himself, clutching the console so as not to crumple to the floor. His Force-sustained grip on his many broken bones must have faltered for the instant his meeting with his sister had taken, and the resulting pain was some of the most intense he had ever experienced. No permanent damage, but it would probably push the timetable of his full recovery back further. Feeling the sluggish flow of life through him and around him in the Force, the reeling chaos of the battlefield, he re-centered himself, suppressed his churning stomach and the overwhelming impulse to faint on the spot. Understanding, and rest, would have to come some time later. He felt Ben's eyes on his back, the curiosity and the hunger—Ben had scented that moment of weakness like voxyn scented blood. Jacen was reminded that all around him many pivotal things were in motion.

He swallowed hard. It tasted like iron.

"Colonel Solo! Colonel Solo, respond!" Came the voice of Lieutenant Telbut from the commlink.

"Yes, _Anakin Solo_?" Jacen said, trying not to sound as utterly ragged as he felt.

"Sir, we're receiving reports of catastrophic system failure all throughout the fleet—sensors are down, but visuals suggest snubfighter impact on several dozen ships, corvette-size and up."

"Damn it! What? How?" He spat back, thumbing off the transmission of the codes that had caused the system failures. The last piece had fallen into place. All that was left was acting the part in his own script. "Wait, belay that—patch me through to Admiral Niathal."

"That's just the thing, Colonel, the _Galactic Voyager _was one of the ships hit. She's taken major bridge damage. Our working theory is sabotage, unless there was some kind of interference from Centerpoint that took down our shields and sensors long enough for snubs to get through."

"Darklighter?"

"Also hit."

"Sithspit. Pull back the snubs, screen our capital ships until we know if we're no longer at risk. The worst of the fighting is over regardless. I will be negotiating the ceasefire shortly. Keep trying the _Voyager_ and the _Peacebringer_. We can only hope the admirals were off the bridge. Get started on the telemetry for where Centerpoint hit. Prep a scouting party to get eyes on it."

"Copy. What's the status on the station?"

"We're almost through the blast door. They say that was a warning blast to prove that the station is operational. They claim Coruscant is next, but we won't be giving these madmen the opportunity."

With an enormous reverberating slam, Ben pulled the durasteel hunk he had cut out of the blast door down with the Force.

"We're going in. Solo out."

Phennir was back on the line immediately.

"General," Darth Caedus said evenly.

"How could you, Solo? Why? Where?" Phennir asked, his voice hollow. "Where, damn you? You truly are a monster."

"I would say that is an accurate assessment of the individual who just committed an atrocity using this station."

"This is a war crime. This was needless. This was unjustifiable."

"I agree. It is unquestionably a war crime, but it's not mine. I didn't fire Centerpoint. This scientist at my feet did."

"What? Of all the lies you could have told—I _heard _you butcher the man at the controls—"

"It was easy enough to jam the comm signal and splice in a new one once we were in the Station. We in the Guard are quite good at that sort of thing. You overestimated me—it was a bluff that was worth a try at the time, in the hopes of ending this quickly and preventing exactly what just transpired. I was knee-deep in comm cable and audio equipment when we last spoke, a few sublevels below my current position. I'm fast, but I'm not that fast. I never had Centerpoint firing codes, anyway. However, I am in the control room now—we weren't able to burn through the blast doors quickly enough to stop the first shot. They claimed that they were going to target Coruscant next, but that disaster has been averted. This station is now unequivocally in Galactic Alliance control, and if this war wasn't over the last time we spoke, well, it surely is now."

"Now, listen, boy—"

"No, it's now time for you to listen very carefully. You have some important decisions to make. In a few hours this news will have reached the rest of the galaxy, and it is going to spell the end for the Confederacy. Depending on where those scientists fired—I don't know, by the way, since it looks like they were able to wipe the station records clean before I stopped them—depending on where, you will face a reaction somewhere between mere horror at the Confederacy's show of needless force, or a galactic crusade to wipe out the most senselessly brutal military since the Yuuzhan Vong under Tsavong Lah. You will be unable to prove that the firing of this station was an act committed by rogue scientists and not a contingency you and the rest of Confederate high command had planned out—the same with the apparent sabotage and suicide bombing of Galactic Alliance ships, in flagrant violation of so many galactic treaties that I hesitate to even posit a number, which I have been informed just took place. Evidence against you will come out. I'll make certain of that. You and I both know that Confederate worlds were already wavering—they'll be throwing down their arms and petitioning to rejoin the Alliance en masse within a standard day. All of this is not to mention the fact that we have just broken the back of your entire fleet."

"You're scum, Solo. Lower than scum. We did not order the firing of Centerpoint. Those suicide attacks were not sanctioned by Confederate high command. Those ships wouldn't answer our hails. We have no means to disrupt your fleet's defenses."

"I would suggest that you start by surrendering now, before you further incriminate yourself."

Phennir laughed. "Of course. And give the worlds I represent over to your tender mercies?"

"Not at all. Not over to me. Over to the new way."

"Your new way, Solo, is the same as the old way: Empire."

Caedus smiled.

"General Phennir, I already told you that I am no politician and no general. I am also no Emperor—I'm not even a soldier."

"Then what are you?"

_All these things and more_, Caedus thought.

"I am a gardener," Caedus said.

Phennir sighed. "You know, Solo, I met your grandfather several times. Funny, how different you are from him."

"Oh? But my detractors love to compare me to my grandfather."

"They're fools. They serially underestimated you, and now it's too late. Vader was a war machine. You are something much, much more dangerous. Your grandfather was a broken man, crippled by the weight of his burdens, throttled by his own crimes. He was something less than human—a ghost, a remnant trapped in a black suit, confined in life. Not you. You remain whole, alive, unbroken—and if your sins weigh on you, they do so in silence. You feed on them. You are so much more dangerous, because you're only just beginning."

"Shall I take that as a compliment?"

"You shall take it as the observation of an old man who has seen the last few decades of galactic history unfold firsthand. You've beaten me. Somehow, I think you've also outmaneuvered your own army. A uniquely impressive victory—if absent any kind of decency. I suppose I have no choice but to accept your terms if I want to salvage my name or my fleet, or save any shred of mercy for the worlds I represent. It falls to me to inaugurate the rule of Jacen Solo. I joined an Empire ascendant, and I fought for it as it died, and now I herald the beginning of a new one. The Confederacy surrenders, unconditionally."

"As acting Chief of State of the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances, I accept."

Over, at last: an era of chaos, an order born of mistake upon mistake, weakness upon weakness, vanity compounded upon vanity—all over. Ascension, and the power Darth Caedus felt coursing through him, around him, in him in every word and act and touch, brought all the sacrifices full circle into glory, from Nelani Dinn to Mara Jade to Jaina Solo.

GAG soldiers were entering the control room around him, securing the entrances and tagging corpses. Outside, in the din of the waning battle, Alema Rar had disappeared, leaving desolation in her wake. Ben Skywalker had taken his proper place at Caedus's side, and he was trembling slightly with barely contained pleasure. Caedus wondered if the pleasure was in the victory, or in scenting the first hint of his master's vulnerability. Almost certainly, he decided, it was some of both.

_And yet, Ben Skywalker, for all that you sensed, weakened as I was in that moment, we both know that I could have easily killed you even then, just as I could easily kill you now. You have become strong, but you will have to be so much stronger than that. We have a long way to go, you and I._

He met Ben's gaze, all knives, looked down into his eyes, gold beginning to shine behind blue, and he gave his most wolfish smile.

"Here's to peace," Darth Caedus said.

"Here's to you, Colonel," Phennir answered. "We shall see how you lead when the smoke settles. We shall see if your house of cards will hold, Jacen Solo."

"General, you needn't call me by that name any longer."

"Hm? Ah. Of course—I should have seen it by now. What shall I know you by, Sith?"

Caedus inhaled, savoring the moment. He had won, and he would win. Ben's gaze finally yielded into bowed submission; he fell to one knee before his master in recognition of what was about to take place.

"Caedus," said the Dark Lord of the Sith. "Call me Darth Caedus."


	16. Artifice

**XV. ARTIFICE**

_Art lies by its own artifice.  
Ovid_

—

Darth Caedus rose. The normal din of the Senate chamber had been subsumed by cacophony in hundreds of languages, excitement and confusion bordering on collective delirium, and Caedus blinked against the hundreds of holocams scattered around the chamber that whipped about to face him as he stood. The Force hummed with the density of life in the chamber, full to capacity, electric with the energy of the collected beings.

He stood ramrod straight, presenting his broad shoulders, his sharp gaunt face, his brown eyes soft, twinkling with hidden knowledge. It was all body language he had learned at length to cultivate aboard the _Anakin Solo_: subtle signs that impressed power, confidence, intelligence. He augmented this with the subtle aura of command he channeled into the Force, the psychic suggestion that awe was an appropriate response to his presence. When he stood, the din turned to absolute silence.

He was extremely tired, down into the broken bones—he had of course been unable to sleep on the shuttle from Centerpoint back to Coruscant, and the few hours since his return had been a frenzy of preparation for what was about to come—but he was ready. He took a deep breath.

He spoke.

"Citizens of the Galactic Alliance:

"Sixty years ago, a new era of galactic history began. After thousands of years of peace, the Old Republic shuddered and died, and was overtaken by a Galactic Empire. The Galactic Empire became locked in bitter conflict with a Rebel Alliance. They fought ceaselessly and at great cost, and over Endor a New Republic was born. The galaxy dared to hope that the crimes of the Empire were a momentary blemish on a union of civilization through history becoming ever more perfect. But what followed the birth of the New Republic was crisis after crisis, warlord after warlord, atrocity after atrocity, as the New Republic fought the Empire to a standstill, and eventually forged a peace. But even this dearly purchased reprieve was not to last. The Yuuzhan Vong invaded our galaxy. They brought our history to the brink of conclusion, buckled the frame of the Republic under a genocidal onslaught. Proudly we stood as the last bastion of civilization. We survived at terrible cost, and we overcame them. And we, together, brought about a new Galactic Federation of Free Alliances. We resolved the Dark Nest crisis, we endeavored to rebuild. But this, too, was not to last. The Galactic Alliance was to be tested in fire, threatened with the collapse of order that has been so characteristic of our era, by the illegal secession of the worlds that have come to be known collectively as the Corellian Confederacy. It is my pleasure to come before you today to share the message of our victory in that struggle.

"Twelve standard hours ago, I accepted Turr Phennir's unconditional surrender on behalf of the Confederacy over Centerpoint Station. The war is over. We have triumphed."

The fragile silence cracked at the revelation. Murmurs like little waves at the seashore began to circulate, hushed but constant.

"On the eve of our victory, we who have survived must solemnly assess why this tragic war had to take place, and why unceasing war has wracked galactic society for the past sixty years—why, I believe, that if we do not act, it can all happen again, and again. There is only one root cause: our history, the history of this era, has been a history of disorder. These sixty years finally offer us one overwhelming lesson: united we stand, and divided we fall. When did the Yuuzhan Vong falter, but when we rallied and unified and came together from out of the ashes of the worlds we lost? And when have we become riven with the sickness of war but when that unity failed? We have lost so much time, and so many lives. We have a duty to our fallen, back through our whole history of strife, who have died so we might still live, and that duty is not to repeat the mistakes of the past. We owe a debt to warriors like my brother, who was butchered by the Yuuzhan Vong. We owe a debt to the noble men and women who died today in cowardly and criminal suicide attacks over Centerpoint. They have sanctified our mission in blood; they a our triumph, to make a solemn request for your assistance. Tonight, together, I ask that you help me to begin a truly new era: one of peace, order, and prosperity.

"In our new era, there will be no more border conflicts, and no more systems putting self-interest before the good of the galaxy as a whole. No more shall we fear imminent crisis, perpetual threat to our very way of life. There will be no more splintering within our alliance, which is permanent and indivisible and eternal. In so doing, this I swear to you: no more brothers and sons fallen on the field of battle.

"We will defy our history of degeneration: we will build and not tear down our creations in our own avarice. Our victory today can survive all of us, and stand into the eons as a testament to galactic civilization's final ability to overcome our worst enemies. I speak, of course, of ourselves, because the systems of the Confederacy are nothing more or less than our own wayward brothers. This civil war we have endured was so awful, and the need to end it was so pressing, precisely because the average citizen of the Confederacy was never so different from the average citizen of the Galactic Alliance—they were deluded by agents of disorder into thinking that they were apart from us when in truth we have always been one civilization, united across the stars. So we shall remain. It is a lesson dearly learned.

"A very wise woman once told me that understanding comes alone through suffering. Our worlds, our people—our families—have suffered indignities for nearly a century, and it is my solemn hope that we have come at long last to understand the lesson: unity is the way. Order is the way. Our way must be the way, forever. There is no alternative but death.

"The systems of the Confederacy will be reintegrated into our union. They will pay a steep price for what they've done, because pain is a teacher, and there are the most vital of lessons to be learned. The leading systems, the ones most responsible for this tragic war, will remain occupied for the foreseeable future in order to ensure both the establishment of peaceable interim governments and complete demilitarization. Indemnities are going to come due, and they will be proportionate to the calamity this war has wrought. Centerpoint Station will be held by the Galactic Alliance Guard in perpetuity—no single system can be allowed to hold a weapon of such terrible power—not after what has transpired over Corellia.

"I confirm that Centerpoint station was fired by a group of Corellian scientists shortly before Galactic Alliance Guard forces led by myself were able to take control of the firing mechanisms of the station. Though the scientists wiped most of the station's databanks clean, triangulation of the shot's vector, along with information recovered from captives, strongly suggests that the target was a world deeply symbolic to any student of the history of our era: the sanctuary moon of Endor. We should have Holonet confirmation any moment now. Although all accounts indicate that the Endor system was mercifully uninhabited by sentient life at the time of the catastrophe, the use of such massive destructive capability as a threat is something that the collective systems of the Confederacy must ultimately answer for. We can only be thankful, and grateful to our servicemen and women, that the station was captured before it could be employed against a populated world. I can testify that the stated intent of these scientists was to target Coruscant with a second blast—a threat made shortly before they were neutralized.

"I will decline to speculate at this time on whether this abomination was due solely to unauthorized acts of the scientists aboard Centerpoint at the time of our effort to seize it, or in line with orders given by Confederacy high command. Relevant data is missing from Centerpoint's security logs, and it is impossible to say at the present time if what remains is authentic. In light of what may well be a cover-up designed to shield Confederate high command from war crimes accusations, a military tribunal must be convened to investigate the role of Confederate leaders in the atrocity—followed, if necessary, by the punishment that crimes against galactic civilization entail.

"Of course, the firing of Centerpoint Station may be the most spectacular crime of Corellia and its allies—but it grieves me greatly that I must speak of a still more egregious tragedy. I must acknowledge the Confederacy's horrifying breach of galactic treaty in the use of suicide attacks in the engagement over Centerpoint. The Confederacy did so at dear cost to our navy—confirmed casualties include some of our greatest military minds, Cha Niathal and Gavin Darklighter—noble soldiers dear in the hearts of all those who understand the dedication and sacrifice of those who protect us. We did not always agree over tactical particulars, but we were all working to the bone to preserve our alliance as best we knew how. I dedicate the peace to them, and I share with their loved ones in the sadness that they are not here to see what they died to create. And this was not even remotely the first Confederate war crime we have endured—need I even mention the myriad acts of terrorism, kidnapping, and torture we know the Confederacy to have employed over the broader course of the struggle? I doubt it, for the ceaseless fear of these attacks has been drilled into citizens of the Galactic Alliance by experience.

"Bringing justice to all of these criminals will not be an easy task—the Confederacy may be defeated, and its leaders will be tried, and those responsible for what happened over Centerpoint will face justice, but the basic elements that sparked the secession crisis still remain: yet hiding, yet undermining our way of life. There is no greater proof of this than over Centerpoint, where our intelligence suggests that double agents serving the Confederate cause played a role in disabling the shields and targeting systems of key vessels, thereby enabling the enemy to carry out their suicide attacks. In order to safeguard our new-found union, we must be constantly vigilant against inward and outward threats. We will unmask these traitors, star by star and ship by ship. We will maintain our commitments to security and counter-terrorism, to a large, autonomous Galactic Alliance Guard, with all the strength necessary to avert the disaster that could yet threaten us. To the citizens of many core worlds who have suffered most heavily from these unconscionable attacks, I cannot restore the friends and family you have lost. I can only promise that your dedication in seeing this war to its close now empowers us to make eliminating these threats from your lives the absolute and utmost priority of galactic government.

"I speak of the Confederate terrorists who have poisoned water supplies, crashed air-speeders, and sabotaged Galactic Alliance military vessels—I speak also of the Jedi Order, which is complicit in all these acts and more. As a former Jedi Knight, it is with a heavy heart that I issue this condemnation. However, the evidence is irrefutable: the Jedi openly betrayed us when we needed them most, proved their commitment to life was less of a prerogative then their commitment to power. The Jedi have murdered and mutilated ours soldiers and our civilians—I have personally repelled several Jedi attempts on my life. Are these the actions of an order dedicated to peace? To justice? The rule of law? The sanctity of life? In all cases, the answer is clearly no.

"I can no longer call myself a Jedi in good conscience. The Jedi Order I knew is no more. What remains is a twisted shell, and its current form cannot be salvaged so long as the power-crazed leaders of the Order command disciples unwilling to doubt or question their deranged orders. It is with a heavy heart that I must affirm that every Jedi is an enemy of this state—and so they shall remain until Luke Skywalker surrenders on behalf of every Jedi and Jedi sympathizer, wherever they hide.

"Of course, we will show all due leniency to Jedi who refuse to serve mad men, surrender, and renounce their beliefs—the rank and file members of the Order are not the real criminals, so long as they reject the malignant teachings that have reduced Jedi from keepers of the peace to enemies of civilization. It is the leaders, the perpetrators of the Order's fall, that must face justice. However, so long as these rank and file members continue to obey, continuing their cowardly strikes at legitimate government and the law, we have no choice but to defend ourselves to the fullest extent.

"Indeed, many Jedi have renounced the old ways since Luke Skywalker stained the Order in madness and in blood. For their safety, I am unable to mention names—save one, who has volunteered himself as an example to any Jedi who may be facing a crisis of conscience. My apprentice, Ben Skywalker, has willingly and fully abandoned his Jedi legacy. Bravely, he has committed himself to stand with the Galactic Alliance against the crimes of his father. I do not need to mention the immense courage this choice required, nor the incredible moral compass that showed him a way to stand tall against Luke Skywalker, to reject the privileged position in the Jedi Order that he was born into. I will only say that Ben Skywalker is a shining example to every steadfast supporter of our union and to every Jedi now questioning the moral high ground they suppose that they occupy—and I will say that in nobly putting his life on the line by revealing this truth, my apprentice has made me very proud.

"We are at the mercy of Jedi prevarication no longer. I want to explain in brief what I have come to understand about the Force over the course of this civil war, so there will be no misconceptions. I have seen that the gift of the Force carries with it an obligation to try to help the helpless, an obligation to spend a life's work building order, peace, plenty. Emotion, knowledge, passion—I believe there is power to be tapped in these most fundamental aspects of consciousness, morality, and mortality. I believe that hiding from this power corrupts, weakens, denies the depth and beauty of life that the Jedi claim to hold most high. I believe that power is something that must be employed, something that cannot be hidden from in good conscience in a galaxy that has been so devastated. I believe in a commitment to the future, in making our galaxy a safer place for generations to come. I believe in duty, and I believe in making difficult sacrifices for a greater good. Nothing can be learned, truly learned, without struggle. In short, I have embraced the way of the Sith.

"I must make a distinction. I do not practice the corrupted Sith ways of my grandfather and Emperor Palpatine. The philosophy of the Sith has been long misunderstood, long misused by monsters and madmen craving power—much like the philosophy of the Jedi is now misdirected from the humble and law-affirming tradition that it embodied for thousands of years. In its truest form, the way of the Sith is nothing more or less than the recognition that we live in a galaxy that embraces all spectrums, all emotions, and that we can do no less—the way of the Sith is the promise that we will protect our loved ones and our civilization at great personal cost. At the core, we must recognize these principles as good and true, because they have been our guide out of the hell of war, the promise of a new era, from the beginning. In choosing to hold our galaxy together by force, in fighting our own brothers, and now, in a more permanent union, we have all long since embraced the core ideal of the true Sith. It is nothing evil, or wrong. It is us, now, victorious and vindicated.

"Today, we shed false pretenses. My name is no longer Jacen Solo. Use my Sith honorary, now forged in the fire of galactic rebirth: I am Darth Caedus.

"We are no longer a Galactic Alliance. Use our true name, our name as an eternal, indivisible union. We are not a Confederation, not a Republic, and certainly nothing so meager as an Alliance. The ties that bind us together are so much stronger than that.

"Together, today, let us form a New Galactic Empire.

"We begin a new era. We begin it with a full understanding of our history, an understanding that does not shy away from the myriad tragedies that have humbled us. Such a view gives birth to only one conclusion: we need a strong, independent military, we need the vision of a single, powerful leader, unconstrained by bureaucracy and local interest. We need to be unified, charged with fervor for a new galactic order. Empire is the only way out of a shameful and bloody era.

"We can begin again, forged in the fire of war, hardened by terrorism and tragedy. We can begin again, even in the wake of the betrayal of those who once represented our best: the Jedi, Cal Omas, the traitors who exposed our soldiers to cruel death over Centerpoint. We can begin again, with martyr's blood still fresh. We are too strong to be caged by the mistakes of our forebears.

"Together, we are stronger. Together, we are beyond betrayal, beyond division, beyond our history of error. Together we can forge an Empire that will never fall, a government that will outshine the Old Republic in glory and in peace.

"I have seen a future without war. I have seen a future where there are no Corellians, no Coruscanti, no Hapans—only proud sons and daughters of the galaxy, free from fear, unchained from the cycle of conflict that has defined us. I have seen a future without terrorism. I have seen it reflected in the eyes of the men and women of our Navy. I have seen it reflected in the eyes of our Senators. I have seen it reflected in the eyes of our daughters and sons.

"I have seen our golden path.

"Not the crude, cruel Empire of our grandfathers. Not the flawed Rebellion of our fathers, nor the futile struggle of their New Republic, nor our undermined Galactic Alliance. Ours will be a better way. Ours will be a permanent way.

"No more division, and no more war. We embrace none of the flaws of the old ways, and all of the triumphs. We will find the traitors, we will find the terrorists, we will find the Jedi, we will make the rule of law supreme over every system once more. We will unify, and we will perform the miracle of civilization, the miracle of the Sith: we will create order from chaos.

"I do not just believe in the way of the Sith. I believe in the fundamental goodness of life. I believe in the power of trade. I believe in law. I believe in the soldiers I have been privileged to fight alongside. I believe that no one should live and grow old and die under the shadow of war. And I am resolved. I will see us live up to our ideals, now and forever. One will rule, and none will go unsatisfied.

"This is our galaxy, and this is our time. This is our way. This is forever."

The murmurs in the chamber that began with the declaration of victory over Corellia were now thundering roars, torrential waves of applause rolling over and through Caedus until it became too loud for him to continue speaking. He was in them, with them, feeding upon their exhilaration, feeding it back stronger.

This was how democracy died: Darth Caedus, arms outstretched in a galactic embrace, welcoming a new day. Darth Caedus, wordlessly holding thousands of Senators in rapture, only tangentially aware of the dozen competing resolutions being tabled by representatives that would dissolve the Galactic Alliance and create in earnest, at the same moment, a New Galactic Empire, led in perpetuity by the man who once went by the name of Jacen Solo. Each one conceded more and subtler power to him than the last.

Letting the gold churn into his eyes for all to see at last, Darth Caedus let his name—his true name—become a beacon to all civilized life. He would be feared, yes, but they would love him so much more.

There had been many teachers. There had been many sacrifices. And he was so deeply tired. Everything hurt.

But Darth Caedus would be Emperor.


	17. Names

**XVI. NAMES**

_What's in a name? That which we call a rose  
By any other name would smell as sweet.  
William Shakespeare_

—

Tenel Ka waited in the darkness for a long time, listening to the roaring in the Senate chamber, like a great furnace being stoked. Beyond the transparisteel window of Jacen's office the Coruscant skyline looked more or less like she had always remembered, even though the galaxy as she knew it had been so fundamentally changed, and was changing still.

The towers spearing the night sky, the latticework canyons of neon where speeder traffic flowed through rivers of light, the Force sensation of life at its densest—it was all as she had remembered, all the same as the days of their youth, she and Jacen and Jaina. She had been a Jedi, then. She was something different, now—she was not entirely certain what the name for it might be. Whatever she had become, Jacen was something else entirely. Above her, in the chamber, he was unfolding the boundless possibility of his new name for all of galactic civilization to see and fear and love. And Jaina was no longer anything at all, but dust blown by solar wind.

And yet all that had changed for Coruscant was the Path of the Gods, the impossible rainbow bridge that now dominated the sky of the city-world in impossible spiral patterns, outshining the stars for radiance, and the distant smoke rising from the Jedi temple that was even now being razed. Even that was not new to this old, old world.

Here, at the end—or the beginning. And what had changed? Coruscant was still Coruscant, once again the seat of power in a galactic empire. In truth she was surprised by the melancholy she felt, considering how direly necessary she now understood Jacen's labor to be.

Tonight, billions would hear the words of Jacen Solo—no, to them, he was of course now Darth Caedus—the first words of their new Emperor. And perhaps they would never come to know what had really happened on Centerpoint, or what had happened to Luke Skywalker, or what had happened to Mara Jade. They might never understand that the words he would speak to them, grand and daring, were not his alone—that together, Tenel Ka and Jacen Solo and Ben Skywalker had labored over them, weaving a tapestry of lies to rival the tapestry of rainbow gems that spanned the horizons of Coruscant.

No one would ever tell them that Jacen had whispered the unmitigated truth to her, the entire history of his betrayal, each murder and falsehood—that he had taken all that was cruel and cold in him together with all that loved boundlessly, and laid it at her feet. And they would never know that she had absolved him.

How could they even begin to understand? Jacen Solo: murderer, betrayer, Emperor. Jacen Solo, her love.

Jacen Solo, who silently entered the office, moved behind her, kissed her neck. "Dear Tenel Ka," he murmured, and his breath was electric down her spine.

Jacen Solo, who she stood to embrace—Jacen Solo, who took her and held her—Jacen Solo, who less than a standard day ago had killed a world.

"Well begun is half done," she said.

They could not understand: she needed Jacen Solo, and Jacen Solo needed her. They could not understand that beneath his crimes, or even in them and through them, there was greatness. And that they alone among traitors remained. And that, together, they could lead and fix this mangled galaxy.

Jacen Solo and Tenel Ka Djo: the last ones standing, Emperor and Empress.

Jacen coughed raggedly, shuddering against her. Faint fever danced in scarlet across his presence in the Force, now diminished to ember, quietly smoldering. Some of his scores of broken bones had begun to fuse in earnest, but he was a long and agonizing way yet from being able to maintain his consciousness, let alone his life, without ceaseless vigilance and precision in the Force. The incident over Centerpoint, when his focus had failed while speaking to his sister for the last time, had only made full recovery more distant. She felt how tired he was, how he ached down into the bone. It had been days since he had slept—given all that there was to be done, they both knew it would be days yet.

"Stay," she said, knowing that he could not.

"I wish I could," he replied, and she knew just how deeply he meant it. "There will be time for that. I need to go back. I just wanted to see you."

"They can wait."

"We can't show them any weakness, not now."

"Just for a moment."

He smiled, so gently, and she watched as the movement within the dim light changed the shade of the bags beneath his eyes. "Alright. Just for a moment."

He held her closer, closed his eyes.

"I'll need to stay on Coruscant for a few weeks while everything settles. Then we'll make the announcement on Hapes."

"Nothing will make me happier."

"Yes. Everything will change, Tenel Ka."

"Yes," she said, convincing herself as she said it. "At last."

"How's Allana?"

"Sleeping soundly. She said to wish daddy good luck for her."

Something in Jacen's presence flickered for an instant, but it was contained just as quickly.

"You don't need to hide from me. I'm here for you."

She felt him shudder once more.

"I'm sorry. Old habits die hard. I was only thinking of how she would judge me if she really understood what we've done here today."

"She would forgive you. She would understand. I do."

"Yes. I have to hope that she would, and I can never forget that you do. I'll see her in the morning. The three of us have a great deal to talk about."

"That's a fact."

Jacen smiled. "I move in the waking world so that she can sleep safely. It's all coming together. I should head back."

"If you must. I love you, Jacen."

"I love you, Tenel Ka." He kissed her on the forehead, straightened himself. "My Queen. My flower."

"My Emperor," she said.

He turned away silently, and she felt him suppressing his fever once again, lifting himself bolt upright once more, reestablishing his aura of command. One last lingering breath of him remained in the Force—love and pain—and the door slid shut, and then he was gone.

She was alone again in his silent office, watching the Coruscant skyline, wondering about how everything had changed, and nothing had changed. Above, he fanned the furnace, and it roared and roared.

—

"…An atmosphere of excitement is palpable today as the Unified Galactic Stock Exchange on Coruscant closes after a rally unprecedented in modern galactic history. Leading galactic economists have predicted that today's trading will cause a significant positive ripple effect for the galactic economy as a whole in the weeks and months to come. Analysts have cited great relief among investors and businesses in the wake of last night's announcement of the defeat of the Corellian Confederacy. Defense and shipbuilding firms saw most of the gains, and related commodities spiked in price as Emperor Caedus announced the first details of the reformation of the Galactic Alliance Navy into the New Imperial Navy. The process, which calls for military modernization on a massive scale, will create millions of new jobs developing, building, and maintaining a retrofitted peacekeeping fleet. Polls suggest consumer confidence is at an eight-year high…"

—

"…Counter-terrorism reforms passed by Solo among his first acts as Emperor enlarged and empowered the Galactic Alliance Guard, rechristened the Imperial Guard, which is in full force throughout Coruscant today as millions flood the skyways to celebrate the end of the war. Public opinion polls taken from a sample of core worlds today show an astronomical eighty percent approval rating for Emperor Caedus. This rate is higher still among a survey of officers in the Imperial Navy, who have closed ranks around Solo in the wake of the sudden deaths of several beloved commanders in suicide attacks over Centerpoint…"

—

"…Protest has been muted. Imperial Guard forces working in conjunction with Coruscant Police have been present to guarantee order at all major rallies against the Emperor. The most vocal protest was centered around the Jedi Temple, which was raided last night following Imperial decree condemning Jedi as enemies of the state. Citing security concerns, some protest leaders have been detained, and are reportedly being held overnight for interrogation…"

—

"…You have to look at this situation like your average Coruscanti will. First: he's not going to care about historical precedent. Autocracy is an old hat for Coruscant, and if Solo has made any case well it's the case for a competent autocrat over the ineptitude of representatives like Omas. Is Solo competent? Well, if ascending from Jedi recluse to galactic emperor in a year or so is any indication, then I'd say yes. The average Coruscanti is going to see that he has a lot to gain economically and politically from a new Empire, implications and allusions be damned. Since Solo took power yesterday, the average citizen of any core world has seen nothing but good news: a leader she overwhelmingly supported has taken the power necessary to make his rhetoric real, markets from here to the corporate sector have broken out of a long grinding slump overnight, and the overwhelming security presence means the bad guys aren't going to hurt her any more. All I'm suggesting is that Coruscant is probably looking towards a future of new jobs, restored prestige, and relative safety—not back at Palpatine…"

—

"…We're glad to have you with us on the program tonight, Senator. You're here straight from the Imperial Senate, where Emperor Caedus just closed session on this, the third day of the New Galactic Empire. Would you give us your impression of the atmosphere in the Senate chamber today?"

"First, thanks for having me. Now as you know, I was one of the first to express my support for Lord Caedus on behalf of the citizens of Fondor, and I have to say that I have not been disappointed so far. We are delivering on long overdue promises to galactic civilization at this very moment—it's incredible to see how much our Emperor is accomplishing for the galaxy in such a short time span. I think we're going to look back on these last few days as some of the most significant and positive and pivotal in modern galactic history. I think this has been a long time coming."

"Some of my colleagues in the press who have been lucky enough to be present in the Senate these last few days speak of a sort of aura around the Emperor. Have you felt it?"

"Yes, I have. It comes across when the speeches are broadcast on the HoloNet, but it's certainly nothing compared to being there in person. It's exhilarating to be around Lord Caedus. I think the entire Senate feels more alive around him, more invigorated, more positive and ready to help this Empire run. Compared to the dismal tenure of Omas, certainly, it's like night and day—to have a real leader on the Senate floor is something I didn't think I'd see in my lifetime. Now, I know you're going to ask if you think it has something to do with the Force. Unequivocally, the answer is no. The claim is preposterous. The man isn't a magician, he's a sincere practitioner of a faith that has been wrongly characterized by Jedi for centuries. Freedom of religion is a value that the New Galactic Empire has enshrined; I say let him pursue his faith and I'll pursue mine. In any case Caedus is very much a statesman before he's a Sith, and anyone who's heard him knows that as surely as I do—I haven't heard a Jedi speak with real knowledge or intuition or concern for policy that effects the average middle class galactic citizen since the early days of Leia Organa. And I have never heard a Jedi _care_so much about the greater picture of the galaxy—about how those who do not touch the Force will thrive, and how we will keep them safe, and how we will make a wealthier and happier society for them and their sons and daughters. The Force enters into what he does in the most peripheral way—Caedus's philosophy influences him, sure, but it's not the ultimate arbiter of truth in all things that it always was for his uncle and his sycophants. People who think we're being brainwashed in there are frankly conspiracy theorists. We are invigorated as a society because Caedus has harnessed a dormant drive for unity in action that has been a long time coming."

"There are probably battalions of lawyers working as we speak to parse exactly what the role of the Senate will become in this new system. How do you think Caedus sees you and your fellow representatives?"

"I think Lord Caedus understands the terrible mistake Palpatine made when he dissolved the Imperial Senate decades ago. He has made it abundantly clear since he took power that he views the Senate as a vital advisory tool, and a key vein of representation in a government that, while steered by a unifying will, also has to address local concerns from local perspectives. I have no doubt whatever that the Imperial Senate will remain a vital tool in crafting policy and conveying planetary interest to the top, our sovereign Emperor."

"How do you address critics of Solo's stance towards civil liberties? Certain rights of free assembly and free expression have been significantly curtailed by some of the decrees issued thus far."

"I think you need to look back on his speeches to see why we are making necessary—and absolutely temporary—sacrifices with regards to civil liberties that will ensure the peaceful establishment of order. We are entering a period of unity, harmony, growth—the first days of a government we swear with our lives to be permanent—and doing anything less than the utmost to show that this government can and will keep the peace is tantamount to comforting our enemies. Caedus and the Senate refuse to repeat the same mistakes that we have seen over and over since the early days of the New Republic—every single galactic government since the Empire has been terribly undermined in its first days. You know what? I'll be fine with our grandkids criticizing the decisions we've made in a couple decades, just so long as they get to take something as uniquely precious as a stable galactic government for granted again…"

—

"…Tensions are high this evening on Corellia and Bothawui, two of the central worlds of the now dissolved Corellian Confederacy. An uneasy armistice persists in both systems, enforced by martial law, as today the Emperor announced the composition of the new interim governments of the occupied systems. Above Coronet, the specks of Star Destroyers in high orbit are distinctly visible in the light of the setting sun, and none here go unaware of their significance. This is but the first step in the long process of demilitarizing and stabilizing the worlds, towards the eventual goal of their entrance into the New Galactic Empire as full member systems. Violence is not expected to break out in urban centers and a strict curfew has been imposed, but Imperial Navy forces—all fresh from the cataclysmic battle that ended the war—have been deployed in overwhelming numbers should simmering hostility towards the perception of stern treatment of seceded systems boil over in the wake of the war's close. The Emperor has repeatedly signaled that heavy war indemnities will almost certainly be a central demand in the finalized surrender arrangement being debated in the Senate. Centerpoint Station is still a hotbed of activity as Imperial Guard forces take full control of the superweapon used to destroy the forest moon of Endor, and Imperial Guard investigators search for clues as to which officials in the Confederate High Command may have ordered the destruction of the moon…"

—

"…Of course, as a historian I find this turn of events fascinating and not a little bit ironic. The Solo-Skywalker hegemony continues, though not in a form observers such as myself could have ever anticipated. Who would have expected Jacen to inherit Leia Organa's political aptitude five years ago? For much of his life, he's given the public the image of the distant, withdrawn Jedi—all taciturn and philosophical, clearly groomed by Luke Skywalker as potential successor. Of course, many have speculated on Solo's transformation following his captivity during the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, but now that he's become Emperor and the press is tripping over itself to kneel before him, the details of that part of his life are increasingly unlikely to emerge—not to mention the specifics of his five-year journey after the war's close, newly fascinating in light of the revelation of his newfound Sith belief system. I also find this turn of events pretty funny, in a way—Jacen Solo had to tear down his mother's government to take power. But then, didn't his mother have to tear down her father's government, too? As if that weren't enough, Ben Skywalker seems to be waiting just offstage for his own opportunity. If anything, this is yet more evidence that modern history moves in cycles around this family. Will of the Force and all that, right?..."

—

"...Good evening. It is my great pleasure to address the citizens of the Hapes Consortium alongside the citizens of the New Galactic Empire this evening. Hapes has long been a world close to my heart, and the New Galactic Empire will never forget the pivotal role that the Hapan Navy played in the final days of the war against the Confederacy. Without Hapes, the war could still be raging. Coruscant could be cosmic dust. It goes without saying that the entire galactic community is in your debt. Your sacrifices over Centerpoint are remembered, and your service toward the noble cause of peace will be rewarded with everything that the gratitude of the Empire can entail.

"But I must confess that I am here to speak to the citizens of the Consortium today for a different reason. It is truly fitting that today, as we bask in the dawn of a newly united galaxy unprecedented in our history, I intend to talk about how Hapes and the New Galactic Empire are joined together in a more personal sense. Hapans understand and forgive the practical necessities of politics, a characteristic that I appreciate. But Hapans also keenly understand the much greater value of real honesty and real truth—a characteristic that I appreciate even more. It pains me that I have been forced to conceal a truth from your people, indeed from the entire galaxy, for the last several years—far too long. But no more. This Empire, and the confidence I have in its power to unify and secure all of our worlds, allows me to reveal now what has been my most dearly held secret since the days of the Dark Nest Crisis. I will reveal it bluntly, and I hope you feel the joy in hearing this that I feel in saying it at long last.

"Your Queen Mother, Tenel Ka Djo, is my wife. We have a daughter. Her name is Allana.

"They are my most precious treasures. They are the ones who I remembered during the darkest days of civil war. They are the ones who kept me going when all seemed lost. And it is to them that I dedicate a new era of peace, an era where I can show my love for them before the entire galaxy, free from fear. They have been my strength in the darkness. They are my strength now, in the light of dawn. Love can unite the stars.

"I am a very happy man.

"Hapes, I thank you."

Nothing more is audible beneath the growing rumble emerging from out of the stunned silence of the assembled audience, largely thunderstruck Hapan nobles who are only beginning to grasp the incredible significance of what has just been said. The Emperor does not try to speak further; the rumble is beginning to grow into a roar, washing over him. He gives a characteristic Solo grins as he turns to his wife, whose cold, regal facade melts instantly into a bright and clear smile that shines and shines, her gray eyes watering, and he embraces her, and he kisses her, and he holds her as the holocams flash and flash.

—

"…What does all of this tell us about the Emperor?"

"It's huge—this is a true revelation. Many speculated about Caedus's private life before he took the throne, and suddenly we have a stark redefinition of his motivations—we're seeing a much more human side. Personally? I hope this will curb both the intolerable Coruscant tabloid speculation about Solo's love life and the Hapan media's unending fascination with the Queen Mother's courtiers, but I imagine it will just make them much worse. Many of his previous actions, such as his personal and direct intervention at Hapes during the coup attempt there, make more sense. Some things become more confusing—why did the Queen Mother distance Hapes from the Galactic Alliance in the aftermath of Kashyyyk? Trouble in paradise? We may never know. But now we see his personal stake in the future without war he so often speaks of—it is the future he was working to make for his family from the very first. Any citizen whose life has been touched by the civil war can relate to that on a very personal level. He also chose an excellent time to reveal the news, binding always isolationist Hapes tightly to the Empire as he starts moving to consolidate more and more power around himself. It's a big win for the nobility as well—to think anything else is very short-sighted. I doubt anti-Jedi sentiment will trump the immense political convenience Caedus has contrived here. There is truly unprecedented gain at stake for the Hapans if they can swallow hard and accept the marriage and the legitimacy of Allana Solo as heir. What Hapan noble could truly protest the Consortium's ruler having such a privileged position with regards to the Emperor's ear? What noble would ever protest the outside possibility of Hapan blood taking the galactic throne in the years to come? There is so much more for Hapes to gain from the union of the Solo and Djo clans now than there was weeks or even days ago. Anti-Jedi sentiment in the cluster only ever survived because it didn't cost anything—so much the better that there's no love lost between Solo and the Jedi these days. Hapan nobility, of all people, aren't going to fume long over the fact that most of them are going to be richer and more powerful than they ever would have dared to imagine a day ago."

"You mention Allana Solo as heir. Where do you think Ben Skywalker stands in all of this? Many predicted that Caedus was grooming him as a successor, but the existence of a hereditary heir could make the process of succession much more complicated."

"That's very hard to say, those mechanisms are only beginning to be defined. Allana Solo is a little girl, and Skywalker's not exactly of ruling age either; by all accounts he toes the line, and he would be incredibly stupid not to. It's just not an immediate concern, given the rest of the policy agenda he's rolling out; I think Darth Caedus has every intention of ruling for a long, long time..."

—

"...Many of the most powerful individuals in the galaxy congregated on Hapes today to celebrate the Emperor's renewal of vows to his wife, Queen Mother Tenel Ka Djo. Although the two were married in utmost secrecy during the Dark Nest Crisis, today's lavish ceremony had the most impressive guest list and press coverage since the wedding of Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker. Among the attendees were the Emperor's closest aides and most trusted allies in the Imperial Senate, the highest strata of the Hapan nobility, high-ranking officers in the Imperial Guard and Navy, and the Corporate Sector business magnates Solo has courted in his bid to resuscitate the galactic economy, which sagged badly during the Confederation-Alliance war.

"Security was intense on the Djo estate, where the ceremony was held, led by Caedus's apprentice and Imperial Guard Colonel Ben Skywalker. The event marked the first real exposure of Chume'da Allana Solo to galactic high society and the galactic media, a marked change from the fear for her safety that had heretofore kept her cloistered in the Hapan royal court. The Emperor and his wife spoke briefly before the assembled guests of their family as a symbol for a new relationship between the historically isolationist Consortium and the galaxy at large, and as a larger manifestation of a new Imperial way..."

—

The dust swirled in the dim light of the tomb, and the cold stone rumbled with the distant impacts of orbital bombardment. Ben Skywalker exhaled, thumbing his lightsaber to life, and the song began.

The man with white eyes regarded Ben coldly from beneath the black folds of his cloak. "Well, well. I knew that we should have never let Alema Rar live."

"Your mistake."

"I am not surprised that your master would send a lackey to do his dirty work. That's been his way since the beginning. I am surprised that he is arrogant enough to send a boy, and a weak one at that, to try to destroy an entire order of Sith—the ones who will overturn the failed Rule of Two."

"Some failure."

"He is only an emperor of lies, and you are only his lackey. This will be our message to our new sovereign: you, Ben Skywalker, shipped back to Imperial Palace one piece at a time."

Korriban was whispering, and Ben felt the raw energy of the world pour into him, lovely and dark and ancient as his perception expanded, as the music mounted, as the first tingle of electricity ran down his spine.

How wrong—this pretender, this false Sith, this dead man—calling him by his old name. Ben Skywalker was a shell, and something much greater, waiting to be named, had taken his place.

Somewhere in the dark, Alema Rar gave him a mental wink, her presence like broken glass as it brushed against him. Then she fired the dart, an invisible line he traced through the darkness in the slow split-second it flew as White-Eyes hurled himself backwards, disappearing into the shadow.

Ben strode forward, predatory, unable to suppress a laugh as he sensed his quarry dash for cover. Ben drew his blaster, fired twice into the blackness, deflecting the bolts that lashed back at him as White Eyes ignited his lightsaber. Alema fired another dart, and White Eyes caught it with a twitch of his blade.

"Dirty tricks," he shouted. "I remain unimpressed."

White Eyes lunged from the darkness a moment later, catching two more darts, two little hisses of smoke flashing as he moved, and then their lightsabers were locked, hissing, and adrenaline and fury washed through Ben, and with a monumental shove he broke the contact, sending White Eyes spinning backwards. White Eyes regained his bearings in time to deflect Alema Rar's igniting blade as she thrust at him.

Ben then felt the fear hit White Eyes as he froze, flanked on both sides, suddenly cognizant of his imminent death. Ben felt the fear within the pretender, and he devoured it. White Eyes was unprepared for the withering blaster fire of the Imperial Guard troopers who had just turned a corner and sighted him. He took a bolt to the chest in the split second before his blade could be moved to defend. As he attempted to deflect the withering fire that followed, Ben advanced from behind and took his saber arm at the shoulder.

Roaring in pain, White Eyes whirled, grabbing Ben by the neck with his remaining arm, lifting him off of his feet, momentarily saved from the blasters by fear of friendly fire. Alema drew near and separated White Legs from his feet at the ankles with a single angled slice, and together with Ben he fell. Pinned between White Eyes and the cold stone, feeling his ragged furious breath, Ben pressed his lightsaber against the man's heaving chest and ignited the blade, the hum of the column of light resonating into his bones as it burned through the chest of the false Sith.

"I am going to bury you," Ben Skywalker said, "and every heretic like you. Deep in the earth, far from the light. Forever. There is only one way forward for the Sith. Mine." Ben watched as the white eyes grayed and faded to black, then he shrugged off the corpse that pinned him and rose.

"Shall we go on?" he said, dusting himself off as he took a backward glance at the momentarily stunned Guardsmen. He gestured for them to continue the advance, and they obeyed.

"Yes," Alema Rar said, her presence unknowable, her smile somehow only growing. "I suppose we shall."

—

It was a long flight through the darkness, through caverns and tombs where pretender Sith hid packed in like rats. This was fitting, because the time had come for Ben Skywalker to exterminate them like rats, quickly and efficiently, moving with Alema ahead of the Guard to make sure no heretic could escape and tell the tale of what happened here. By the time they reached the bottom of the sprawling complex the aura of the world was almost too much to bear, and Ben Skywalker found himself locked within his own prescience, watching his actions seconds before he chose them. The walls this deep were made of exposed earth, bone dry, old beyond age, and Korriban itself seemed to inhale dust and exhale power in a slow, constant, overpowering rhythm. He knew he was going to draw his blaster and ignite his lightsaber before he turned the final corner, and he saw before seeing that the ancient man who hung in the statis chamber like some massive predatory monster was incredibly dangerous.

He fired his blaster once, and the transparisteel shattered, spilling liters of sickly-sweet smelling bacta onto the dirt floor. He fired again, and by the time his vision became reality he had overcome the shock of the man's lurch into vitality, absorbing the bolt's energy through the palm of his hand and twisting his massive frame through the smoldering remains of the stasis chamber in an instant. Then Ben was lifting his lightsaber in defense, too late as the man feinted, rocketing forward at inhuman speed, and punched Ben Skywalker in the chest with all the force of a mag-train. Ben went spiraling backwards, feeling the snapped ribs, and hit the ground in a cloud of dirt.

By the time he landed the man was already at Alema, easily chipping away at her hastily erected defenses with his crimson blade. From the ground Ben aimed sightlessly at the man's silhouette through the dust and took another shot with the blaster, which hit him square in the back but left no wound, causing only a sudden involuntary spasm that let Alema dart away as she brought her blowpipe to her lips. The man recovered, a thin wisp of smoke rising from his head, and gave Alema a massive shove in the Force just as she inhaled to fire the dart. She landed on her flank and spat the dart out with all deliberate care. As she did so the looming man advanced and kicked her squarely in the stomach. Alema curled in on herself.

The man rolled his bare shoulders. "The Emperor sends children to fight me. You've disturbed the krayt dragon's nest, boy and beast." Ben attempted to lift the blaster and fire again, but found that he was being pinned in the Force. The man approached Ben slowly, squatted, and Ben watched his mismatched red and blue eyes for what seemed like an eternity.

"Too bad about the rest of them," Ben said.

"So long as I live, the One Sith will live," the man answered. "I have lived a long time. I will live much longer. We have a shared lineage, don't we, you and your master and this broken thing and I? In the end, we all born from the Yuuzhan Vong. Still, I wonder if you know the one real rule of the Vong. It is also the one real rule of the Sith. Has the boy Emperor seen it, taught it to you? A shame that your potential was so wasted with him. The rule is this: the only constant in this galaxy is suffering."

He rose, and then sliced off Ben Skywalker's saber arm with a flick of his blade.

In a moment that was infinity, in communion once again with his old friend agony, Ben remembered the Embrace. He remembered all that he had learned, all that which was silent and lovely and true, held in an eternal vigil, exploring forever the spectrum of colors of a broken galaxy. Remembering epiphany, remembering a broken transparisteel universe awaiting rebirth—remembering that love was pain, and pain was love, greatness in sacrifice, life through death, the way of the Sith—it became suddenly clear to Ben Skywalker that the man had made his last mistake.

There were patterns in the latticework of screaming nerves, and he followed that latticework through his frame, into the dirt, damp with bacta, into the detached arm that still clutched his lightsaber. There would be one chance, and he breathed in the pain, and then he acted, drawing into the supernova of suffering that went by the name of the Force and there building the power to shred the shackles of the pretender, to reverse their grasp for one solitary decisive instant. The man was ancient, but Ben was young, and where the man simmered with the power Ben was boiling in it. Ben only required a moment, and the old man had long since forgotten the value of a single moment. The immense weight of the pin on him flickered, and then lurched into a reversal—the kinetic force of the action swirled the dust of the chamber into a storm of churning shadow. Ben Skywalker had trumped the pretender in hate and power and will, all ran together into the ever-cresting momentum that was himself.

"I know," Ben Skywalker said.

The clutching fingers relaxed, and the lightsaber rose unsteadily into the air, then lanced forward and speared the man as he stood over Alema Rar, where he had been channeling his power into her body, still locked in the fetal position. The blade went through the chest, then it lurched upward, incinerating most of the spine and then the neck and then the skull, and then the man was no more. He fell with a wet thud. All was silent, but for Alema quietly sobbing.

After a long time, Ben Skywalker rose and limped to her. She was watching something beyond sight with wide-open eyes that glittered with moisture, breathing shallowly. She was not physically wounded—at least not more so than usual—excepting some broken ribs. But in the Force she was vibrantly alive and whole, so unlike the alien kaleidoscope of broken glass that her presence had been just moments before. She was booming in the Force like Ben himself or Caedus or the dead man did. Ben stared at her, silently loathing and fearing. He had never trusted her, and he had only known weakness in her broken mind from the beginning—how perfect that she would only come into her latent potential at the end. What had his master ever seen in her? It was funny, though, that she had been of some worth to him, in the end. She had distracted that man in the jagged snare of her mind for just long enough. Nonetheless, the time had come to erase the liability that was Alema Rar.

—

"We need to address one more thing before you go."

"Yes, master?"

"If something unfortunate were to happen to Alema Rar while you two are on Korriban, I would not be overly upset. In fact, such a tragedy might just suit our ends."

"Hm. I hadn't considered that."

"But you know exactly what I have in mind. And you think it's about time. Fair enough; the threat her death might have once posed for Allana is now null. With that factor taken out of play she has become more liability to us than asset, on balance. Her part has been played, and now she lingers at great risk. Of course, use discretion. Your mission is to exterminate the heretics. But should you have an opportunity to take Alema out of play down there, I would not hesitate to take it. The timing would be convenient."

"In short, I should exploit the situation in any way possible."

"Exactly. Always. Could I really expect any less from my apprentice? That will be all."

Ben Skywalker stalked out of the Emperor's office, obviously lost in thought.

"That's your last appointment for the evening, Lord Caedus," said an aide over the comm.

"I'll be retiring to my chambers," Caedus replied.

Caedus rose from his desk and walked out the door. He felt Allana's presence nearby, hiding behind the desk of a member of his staff.

"What's the matter, Allana?"

Her head peeked out from behind the desk.

"How did you know I was there?" she asked. "I was hiding myself, like mom showed me."

"I know a lot of things," he said, smiling.

"That's no fair," she replied.

"Who said anything about fair? Walk with me."

She fell in at his side. He ruffled her hair; uncharacteristically, she didn't protest.

"So, what's wrong?"

"I wanted to ask you something."

"Ask."

"Do I have to get a lightsaber when I grow up?"

The question surprised him. She often surprised him like this; it was one of the great pleasures of his life. He considered his answer carefully.

"Not unless you want one," he answered.

"Do you promise?"

"Of course I promise."

"Good. Because I don't want one. I don't want to hurt people. What's the matter, daddy?"

"Nothing," Caedus said. Finally, a promise he could keep. Fair, indeed.

He had tried to mask the emotional response he felt at her answer, and she had sensed it instinctively. She was extraordinarily empathic, far more so than even he had been in his youth. His daughter was very strong and very smart. He only discovered that more the more he spent time with her.

"Nothing at all," he repeated. "It's just that your father loves you very much."

—

Ben picked up the dart from the damp earth, brought the tip to the nape of Alema's neck, which was pockmarked by discolored acid burns. She did not resist—she seemed to hardly even notice.

"Somehow, he made me remember what I once was, Ben Skywalker," she whispered. "That is a terrible power for a mortal to possess. A lesson in suffering: I had forgotten too much. Balance. I remember again. The galaxy moves towards completion."

"I'm sorry, Alema," he said.

She watched him, and her eyes were very unlike the feral mad ones he had known. She looked very tired.

"Lies are no longer necessary. You are not sorry. Quite the opposite. You see too much of Alema Rar in yourself, Skywalker-who-was, and it terrifies you. At least I had a name. You are broken, but you refuse to see. We all are broken. Him, too. Him, most of all. There will come a time for both of you to mend or finally die. The Force abhors an open wound."

"Speaking of which. This is to be your tomb, Alema. We can't let you live. You know too much. Whatever that man just did to you made you too dangerous."

"Ah... I am happy to part with knowledge. Knowledge is far too much to bear. I feel only relief. One day you may understand that what you are about to do is mercy, and right in the way of things. I have played my part in this cycle. I was made from the Force, and I return to the Force. I served Balance in life, and I serve it in death; I paid a terrible price, but at least I made my enemies pay their fair share in turn. I saw a Republic die, and I helped bring about the most perfect revenge against the people who turned me into this... this. A small price to pay, when your master has now ended all who I wished to see end. I am satisfied enough, Ben Skywalker. I died a long time ago; it took this long to stop moving. I have no regrets. I am ready to reunite with the Nest. I am going to see my sister again. That was all I ever wanted."

Ben smelled the cauterized flesh—his, still smoking, but also hers, the air redolent with seared skin from long ago. Her eyes glittered, and Ben Skywalker shuddered as he pressed his pale hand against her scarred blue skin, feeling the faint pulse. Then, lingeringly, the tip pierced the flesh, and he slipped the needle into her neck. She didn't seem to notice.

"I feel sorry for you. You are the last of your line. You will come full circle too, Ben Skywalker. So will he. Perhaps you will remember what you were. It's terrible, but it's the only way out."

She died slowly, slowly, as the poison crept in, and when she was gone Ben chose to close her eyes. He stood and surveyed the destruction, then he turned away. He stared at his severed arm, still lying in the dust, fingers reaching out to him in a beckoning gesture. He lifted his commlink and was surprised by the raggedness in his voice.

"Skywalker reporting in. All clear down here. Send a med team."

—

"...Imperial forces led by Colonel Ben Skywalker mounted a raid on the Korriban system at eleven hundred Coruscant time today, acting on intelligence from surrendered Jedi that suggested the world was the current headquarters of the Jedi Order, classified by the Empire as a militant terrorist organization. Beginning with intense orbital bombardment, Imperial forces devastated key targets on the desert world before mounting a small-scale ground attack to penetrate the depths of the main Jedi compound. Emperor Solo briefly addressed the Senate this evening to confirm the success of the operation.

The list of Jedi captured and killed in the operation remains classified, but the Emperor did divulge the death of Alema Rar, a former member of the Order who went rogue during the Dark Nest Crisis—and the current central suspect in the murder of Mara Jade Skywalker. Purportedly, she resisted the attack alongside the Jedi. Her presence on Korriban raises significant questions about the current leadership, composition, and intentions of the Jedi Order…"

—

A shame about Alema Rar, but she had served her purpose. Whatever she had seen when she stared back at the Jedi girl she had been was lost—and all that power with it. That man—Krayt—had known a great deal as well, and all that was now just dust. Perhaps the memories of the monster who had been a Jedi, and the memories of an ancient man with mismatched eyes who had wanted to remake the Sith, would wait in this tomb to be discovered by the millenia of students to come. Perhaps they would become part of this world's essence, incomprehensible whispers within the silent places of Korriban, or within the howling wind that carved canyons from dark stone. Perhaps there would be nothing for them but the quiet dark.

Forgetting for a moment the pain of his ribs, the excruciating false sensation where his arm had been, forgetting the mission, basking in the mingled auras of black and bottomless death and unspeakable power that were omnipresent on this planet, Ben Skywalker comprehended the essence of the thousand generation tradition that had changed him into something glorious.

One true path, one golden thread binding history, surviving through long cycles of darkness and light, hidden in shadow cast by blistering sun, basking in the glory of deepest night: one master and one apprentice, testing, tested, consuming and consumed, always. A hand outstretched, beckoning. In this, as in so many things, he saw his the beauty of his master's vision. Here, on the world where dead Sith slept, his master had crafted a decisive test for his apprentice, and had chosen the perfect moment for the next phase of the transformation to begin.

The Sith who had once gone by the name of Ben Skywalker, now heir to the order of Bane, began to truly consider in earnest how he would murder Darth Caedus. Caedus's enormous galactic conspiracy had brought him this far; it would take a conspiracy of his own making to reach the end. He would learn, and he would wait, and in secret he would act, and every moment he would work towards the exalted day when he and Caedus might conclude the pact they had sealed.

And all that he would need then, to be complete, would be a name.


	18. Flowers

**XVII. FLOWERS**

_From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.  
Thomas Moore_

—

Darth Caedus moved through the dark in long elegant leaps, twisting, pulled but little by the vague suggestion of gravity. Ebaq 9 had changed little since his last visit, and as he maneuvered through the immense tunnel complex towards the wisp of familiar presence that he felt in the Force, he found himself lost within his own history.

The passage of time had been kind, all things considered—almost fifteen years since he took the throne, he was still handsome. Still ghostly pale, rail thin, but handsome yet; age had made the resemblance to his father more prominent. He wore the strain of a decade and a half of dark side immersion well—it manifested merely in the unnaturally sunken eyes, churning with a gold that he no longer bothered to conceal. In the sparse light of the tunnels, his first gray hairs glinted.

Emperor Caedus looked the part—regal, severe, cloaked no longer in the regulation black uniform of the Imperial Guard but in exquisitely crafted ornamental robes that flowed around him, concealed his gauntness, all blasted with spirals of orange and red, licking fire-tongues and birthing novas that shifted and whirled with each lean motion he made.

He hit the stone on one booted foot, kicked off of it gracefully and rebounded onto a new vector in one smooth motion, spinning. He fell deeper and deeper, or rose, for the difference here was nearly nonexistent, his cloak twisting, exhaling in an intangible wind.

Nostalgia: how different things had been when last he had seen Ebaq 9, as a Jedi Knight fighting to save his sister from the Yuuzhan Vong. He had worn a different name.

Funny, how he could look back now and see only a vast history of weakness.

The ooglith cloaker he wore pulsed with void-life, a thin skin of absence in the Force that dug into his pores and reached down his throat, through his lungs—let him survive in the absence of atmosphere.

She would understand how entirely appropriate this was. She would understand a great deal. That was if she was indeed here, of course—but he became more and more certain that she was as he went deeper. The absolute silence of the world was only so in seeming, future-streams all shifting as he took them in. He felt the nexus of nostalgia crystallize as he touched his memory of his first teacher, found himself in flashes in a long-departed day. He found the point where the tunnel he had been traversing, neatly carved by the boring equipment that had been used to mine this rock decades ago, intersected with one obviously formed by immense explosive force. The walls were charred black, and the Force was unstill with the faint invisible hiss of background radiation. He rebounded again, onto a vector that would propel him into the rift, and made his way down, down, down.

Stifling memories of voxyn snarling with smoking acid dripping from their fangs greeted him, and memories of Yuuzhan Vong warriors strangling as air burned away, and of bounding in the low gravity towards his sister—for an instant, bounding in the low gravity towards the first Jedi he had murdered, the beginning of his ascent—stifling memories that all loomed with the weight of his past, here on a dead rock at the heart of the galaxy.

As he found himself becoming lost in the infinite pathways of time, the unmistakable presence of the one who had shattered him so many years ago brushed against his mind, probing. He shuddered, and the decades seemed to shimmer, blur, recede—it entered his mind with unsettling familiarity, and he greeted it. The cunning, dangerous, not unkind presence gathered, coalesced within the Force—and he knew that she had been waiting for this moment for a very long time.

Darth Caedus came to a halt, and he smiled at the darkness.

_Hello, Vergere._

_We meet again, Jacen Solo. I thought I told you that the dead can have no traffic with the living._

_You did. But you also told me that everything you said was a lie._

She materialized at his side, translucent, exactly as he remembered her, and she watched him with her unknowable alien eyes.

_My dearest student. I was worried that you had listened to me. My, how changed you are._

_But you have not changed at all._

_We can always rely on death. Why have you come? You should know that you will find no truth in me._

_Actually, your presence here has already answered some of my questions. Fifteen years ago, as I wavered, Lumiya came to me and told me that you were Sith—but a selfless Sith—a better Sith. It was conceivable—and, more importantly, the concept spoke to me at a pivotal moment. But I always knew that the story had a glaring flaw. My uncle taught that no Sith can touch the Force after death in the same way that a Jedi can—retaining the will of the individual within the larger order and all that. The Sith ghost is anchored to its eternal tomb, a sort of shadow, or imprint, or impression burned into the Force at a particular point. One is chained, and the other is free. And here I find you, yet waiting for me on Ebaq 9._

_My clever student. I have often wondered if you would seek to exhume me here—at times, as I felt the echo what was going on out there, I wondered if you were even alive to ponder my fate. You are correct in this: my vigil here has been long. It will be much longer still. I ask you this, though: are chains truly chains if they have been willingly forged, willingly donned, by their own wearer? Might they not constitute instead a greater expression of freedom—an adult's freedom, rather than that of a child?_

_That is a question that I myself have come to ponder. That is, perhaps, part of the reason that I have come here to seek your counsel._

_Yes, I can feel the chains you wear. I can even see it—_her gaze flickered over his robes for an instant—_Your uncle and I always agreed that you had a special destiny, Jacen Solo._

_Indeed: I am no longer Jacen Solo, Vergere. I wear a different name._

Her eyes widened, and her crest flashed in pale silver-blue.

_You _have _ascended._

_Yes. I have ascended._

_I merely suspected, hoped, I did not think—to see you like this, I did not even know if you would—excuse me. It has been a long time—might I hear your true name—as a teacher to his student? Might I hear it?_

_Of course, Vergere. I am Darth Caedus._

She seemed to quiver just perceptibly, inhale, all angles, her spectral eyes glassy.

_I did not know if I would ever be so privileged as to hear your true name. It's right. It sounds like... like the climax at the culminating movement of a shadowmoth's song—it captures the scope of the things you have done, and the scale of the things yet to come._

_It began with you, Vergere._

She bowed her head in acknowledgment.

_Darth Caedus, you know that I chose to be your happy servant to my willing end. I see now that I served something much greater than I ever dared hope. Might I ask you, though, before you tell me of your rise, what became of the Yuuzhan Vong? Was Alpha Red deployed?_

_Alpha Red was deployed on only one world—it never reached Yuuzhan'tar. I defeated the Supreme Overlord, and that ended the war._

_Might I assume that Onimi did not go without a fight? And that the Yuuzhan Vong did reunite with their lost homeworld, after a fashion?_

Caedus watched her eyes glint with extreme intelligence, her crest flash in the blaster-red that he recognized as a facsimile of a grin.

_You knew a great deal more than you let on. Upon learning of the death of their overlord, most of the Yuuzhan Vong race traveled into the Unknown Regions with Zonoma Sekot—to rediscover what they once were._

_I had my suspicions._

_You are still full of surprises, Vergere._

_Perhaps—but my repertoire is not nearly so full as yours, my Lord. I spent many years watching the Yuuzhan Vong, and wondering how to save them—how to bring them back to their beginning, which could have only ever been with the Force. You, though, have become something new entirely. So tell me—how is it that a Sith stands before me, when last I beheld a Jedi? What music has my dear shadowmoth made?_

_Songs of war, songs of death, songs of betrayal—and within every song a sacrifice. I stand atop a mountain of bodies._

_Such is our way. I could see the immense potential inside of you from the very first, but I could not see if you would follow my path so far—even far beyond where I chose to stop. I never dared to take a name. Names are such slippery things._

_That they are. _

_Do you remember that game we used to play, when you were a child? 'Who is Jacen Solo?', we called it._

_Yes. That game is over._

_Oh? Did you win?_

_I decided Jacen Solo was the first step towards something greater._

_I knew that you would be wise enough to choose, and act. I had hoped that after the war you might not be summoned by an even more difficult destiny, that fate's demands on your line might be satisfied with the redemption of the entire Yuuzhan Vong race. But I see now that for your line, there is no respite from duty. I knew, at the end, that you had become strong and wise enough to do what would be necessary down the line._

_Like you?_

_Of course. The life of a Sith is a long history of sacrifice, and we teach by example. I was summoned to my duty a long time ago, and the consequences have brought me all the way here. What has become of the New Jedi Order? Has it survived you?_

_No. The circumstances of the event preclude a comprehensive body count, but if any Jedi have slipped past me, they've been in hiding for more than a decade. My father is probably still alive somewhere, but he's no Jedi—just an old man._

Caedus was not sure what he detected within the shadow-presence of Vergere—a hint of nostalgia, a hint of sadness—but most of all, a sensation he knew well: the stark satisfaction of the master plotter, victorious. He thought he might have caught an echo of euphoria in her shadow-presence, and he recalled the euphoria of rising before the corpse of Luke Skywalker.

_Darth Caedus, what are we? Traitors? Sith?_

_All and none. We are the same—beings who understand that words are less than the things that they describe. We have been the same from the very first, Vergere._

_We are gardeners._

_And more than that. More than the name. We chose. We acted._

_Always. So, the Jedi are no more—or, at the very least, scattered to the stars once again. I died to save you from your own attempt to rescue your Jedi sister, if I recall correctly. I might blame your wavering convictions for my long exile here._

_It was a waste. I was young._

She shrugged.

_I jest, really. I was weary, and everything was in place, and there was no better way for me to die than in your service. You needed time, and I am content that my life was good enough to purchase it._

_You sound like Lumiya, at the end._

_Did you kill her?_

_No. She didn't give me the chance. Shortly after my ascent, she sacrificed herself in a duel with my uncle. She died to give me the time I needed to come to terms with what I had become._

_From the moment I met her, I knew that Lumiya was looking for something she could die for. Funny, that Sith always die in the most painful ways. I died for a cause I hoped you would one day realize was hollow, Lumiya died at the hands of the man she loved—know that she never stopped loving Luke Skywalker terribly. There is beauty in this, too, in a way. You will see._

_I am prepared. The day comes for my apprentice to act, I think._

_Ah. Is this why you have come to visit your old teacher?_

_One of many reasons. I thought I might seek advice from the best._

_Who have you taken?_

_Ben Skywalker._

She didn't look surprised. She sighed, crest churning in violets.

_But of course. Who else? He was an infant in my last days, and now he has taken up burdens no man should have to bear. You know, I _told _your uncle—I warned him about all of this, fool that he was. Tell me—do you ever feel that time moves in circles? Nothing changes but the names—and they change little. Do you ever sense that there are no new tragedies? That old ones hide for a time and then return, just different enough to fool every time?_

_Yes, with good cause. You see, I have come to rule a New Galactic Empire._

They were silent for a long moment, watching the long dim abyss. Eventually Vergere began something close to a laugh, like a lark's song echoing slowly from far, far away.

_I should have seen it coming. I wanted to take the Sith away from Palpatine, but I have only made him anew, and so much stronger. I wanted a Sith Order that could _free _people. My dearest student has followed the path of the man I most hated. There is no mercy for our kind._

_I know you better than that. I know better than to believe that you have regrets, Vergere._

Her gaze returned to him, and her crest turned in reds.

_No. Of course not. How can I look at you, my dreams made flesh, and have regrets? How can I look at the man who embodies everything I sought to achieve and have regrets? Have I not seen a world made of steel turned to jungle? Have I not seen the valleys of Zonoma Sekot at sunrise, the amphistaff fields burning on a Yuuzhan Vong seedship? I have studied the Jedi, and I have studied the Sith—I have been Jedi, and I have been Sith, and I have been much more than either. I have been a steward, a teacher. I have seen our galaxy buckle before invaders, and I played my part not in destroying them—nothing so crude or so ignorant as that—but in bringing them to redemption within the Force—I played my part in proving not just that galactic civilization could survive, but that it was worthy of survival. This is our lesson, which we teach with our lives: all is one. Beauty and death are inseparable—in you, Emperor Caedus, I can see worlds extinguished and worlds born. Darth Caedus, when I was remaking you, I told them that you were the most dangerous Jedi alive. Then you were just a boy, uncertain, raw, seeking an answer to pain. Now you are a man, forged, chained, and I can see in you every answer I ever wanted. I tell you now that I behold the most dangerous being I have ever seen, and I augur that you will grow in power yet. I tell you now that I am so proud of you. I could not have asked for a better student. Does the sometime greatest hope of the Jedi not stand before me now as my superior, my teacher, the Dark Lord of the Sith, but also so much more than those hollow names would ever suggest? I knew Palpatine, far better than most. Palpatine was a butcher. I know you, far better than most. You are a gardener. And you're not nearly finished. I regret nothing._

_All of this began with you, Vergere. There is no finer teacher._

_If I am the seed, you are the flower._

He bowed his head in acknowledgment, as if to receive her blessing.

_Tell me about this apprentice of yours. The young Skywalker._

_He has been taught in our way, instructed in agony. He was a boy—not so much younger than I was, then—when I broke him in the Embrace. I took him in his weakness, and I showed him the depths of betrayal, and I remade him. I pulled him out of the mire of inaction and into the enormity of our duty. He became an instrument of my will in the moment he plunged a knife into his father's back. He stood at my side and he helped me as I built an Empire. I have come to wonder if I can kill something in which I see myself so clearly._

_It is your duty to try. A Sith challenge has many facets and forms—I never challenged you to a duel._

_You did much more. Much more._

_Exactly. The challenge must be tailored to the student—it must be manifold, unique, perfect. I doubt you question his skill with a lightsaber, or his capacity as a leader._

_Not in the slightest._

_Those challenges are emblematic of the old way. Ancient history. The greater one must survive, made stronger for the struggle. That is the only truth._

_Then I test him not as Sith, or successor_—

_Test him on this: his ability to choose, and act. Test his greatness against yours—test him as a gardener, who must choose what lives and what dies in the most intricate way. Conceal nothing—turn your weakness into strength, as I showed you in the first days—and see if he is strong enough to do the same. But this question remains very strange to me, because you know all this intuitively—it is written in every fiber of your being. I saw to that. What do you truly fear, Darth Caedus, that has sent you here to seek counsel with the dead?_

Darth Caedus was suddenly overwhelmed with a sensation of looming finality awoken by Vergere, like she had seen into a part of him that he himself had carried but not known—he found himself blindsided by a facet of the future that he had not followed to its conclusion. He sensed that now, finally, the end was drawing near. Factors had changed, the vectors of threads rebounding into a new, unsustainable shape. The balance had shifted, and the center would not hold. Golden threads exploded out into the dark.

_I—I have a daughter. A wife._

_Ah._

Vergere's crest rippled in dark shades that melted into the blackness of the cavern—he could feel her rippling disappointment.

_I had thought you more intelligent than that, Jacen Solo. It would be hypocritical of me to blame you for involving the boy Skywalker, but I thought you would know better than to perpetuate your line, cursed as it is. I thought you were wiser than Luke Skywalker, who in his arrogance built a Jedi dynasty that has inevitably come to a spectacular collapse. Just like Anakin. In all your power and glory, you are trapped, and so is your progeny. Know this._

_But they, too, are flowers. I have no defense but their beauty._

In the darkness he conjured their images with the Force, so his wife and daughter flanked him. Tenel Ka, regal in the garb of Empress but overflowing with warmth, had aged elegantly, had not lost a fraction of the piercing beauty and wisdom of her youth. Allana, now nearly as old as her father had been when he was captured by the Yuuzhan Vong, had inherited her mother's wise gray eyes and striking beauty, the tenderness towards all life that had characterized her father as a boy. Great intelligence and incredible delicacy were written on her features. Vergere watched Allana for a long time, head cocked to the side with as if she were glimpsing an uncanny familiarity, like she was staring into some strange mirror.

_Your daughter has inherited your great gift, hasn't she? Your... empathic connection with the Force?_

_Yes._

_Has she been trained?_

_No. Nothing beyond levitating pebbles, sensing trouble._

_I somehow doubt that she is wanting in potential._

_Not at all. Her potential is immense. The way she burns in the Force, even without training—at times, she reminds me of my brother. But she didn't want it, and I want what she wants. She is a student of medicine at an academy on Coruscant. She's brilliant—a prodigy, I am told. She will be a surgeon. I am very proud._

_That would be right, somehow, if it could be so. I think that in a more ideal galaxy, you and I might have both been surgeons instead of Sith._

_I have dedicated all of myself to building that more ideal galaxy for her. I have made my promise: she will not have to follow in our footsteps._

_Hm. We are beyond the need for politeness, you and I, yes? So let me propose that you are being uncharacteristically naive about this. You are not prepared to confront the possibility that you might have to break that promise, are you?_

_My daughter is not part of what is to come. Ben makes her part of this at his own peril—I do not think he could face the fury that I could bring to bear if he tried to involve her._

_That is not what I mean, Darth Caedus—you did not answer the question. It would of course be foolish of him to use your daughter as leverage against you. Those bonds are powerful even among those blind to the Force; among Jedi and Sith, those bonds are the most elemental stuff of fate itself. No, I am asking you a more interesting question: what if you _win_? What if you must live to take a new apprentice, as is your duty to our way? What then?_

He knew where this line of questioning would lead. He had been there before, many times.

_No, Vergere. Never._

_You will not find another one like her in all the galaxy, Darth Caedus, and not just because you killed anyone who might hold a candle to her innate brilliance. You will search and search, and you will find that only Skywalker blood can match Skywalker blood—that is the trap of your line, the great trap that is the Force-sensitive dynasty. Mind it, Darth Caedus—it killed Palpatine's Sith, and it killed your uncle's Jedi. Realize that after you have trained a Skywalker, in all the line's potential, only another will do. Your grandfather saw this in his son, and Luke Skywalker saw it in his, and you shall come see it in your daughter._

_I would not do it. I would sooner die—I would sooner let the Sith die. Circumstances have forced me to compromise too much—I will not compromise her. The promise has been made, and I will keep it or die trying._

_And say you do die trying—consider what will happen if your apprentice defeats you. _He _will not hesitate to take her and train her, with no reservations, with none of the mercy of a father, once you are out of the way._

_Ben has long since agreed with me that she is not a suitable candidate. Politically speaking—_

_Spare me. Surely you haven't become the emperor of the galaxy without understanding that our kind can manipulate the politics any which way we require. He would find a way, because she would be worth it. She is doubly trapped, in your life and in your death._

Caedus closed his eyes, stilled himself.

_Did you ever face this, Vergere? Do you know what it is to choose between loves?_

_Yes. I loved the way of the Jedi, and I loved the way of the Sith. I loved what you were, just as I loved what I knew you could become. And you were not the first, Darth Caedus. You were merely the best._

_You refer to Darth Krayt, I presume._

_I knew him as A'sharad Hett. You two have met?_

_No, I never had the privilege. Ben ended the pretender and his heretic order at my behest fifteen years ago._

_That is very impressive indeed. Hett had such potential when I knew him—such power in such a fool. He must have become something truly terrifying after so many years and so much pain, certainly within the realm of power of a true Sith Lord, and that your apprentice was able to defeat him speaks volumes. It pleases me greatly to know that the future of the Rule of Two is secure._

_Don't be so confident. I will end it before I make my daughter follow this path._

_I will not belabor the point. I see that you are obstinate. The time is not yet right for your mind to change. Understandable. I will merely suggest that the Rule of Two has survived for thousands and thousands of years—by virtue of its fundamental nature, it will find a way to persist. I will also suggest that time will break your certainty. I was nothing if not an observer in life, and in death, even within this quiet place, I can make out the larger shapes of things to come. You will choose, and act. It is only right that that choice carry with it a truly terrible amount of pain—only right that you might play your role in the great cycle, and bring your daughter into the wholeness of the Force. It's not so bad as you fear—what has made you great might make her great as well. In her empathy, even as she bristles against doing harm to life, she will sustain what is fundamentally good and worth the sacrifice in the Sith, and temper our path with mercy, with a surgeon's careful hand, and carry your work towards completion. _

_But she—she is all I have not given in the name of duty. Her alone._

_That was your mistake—to think that beings like us can do any less than sacrifice all we have, all we hold dear, to our duty. Yes, you may have to break the promise you have so devoutly kept to her. But it will be worth it. In so doing you will sustain our covenant with all the daughters in the galaxy, who will require the best and the wisest to shepherd them towards the light when you are gone. Even in darkness, even in agony, even in the breaking—even in the black heart of this world which is my tomb—there is the seed of life, the seed of beauty. That is the promise of the Sith Order: a perpetual machine for building beauty out of all that suffers and struggles in living things. I will illustrate. Let me show you the sum of my labors here, in my exile._

Vergere moved one clawed foot, revealing a single flower rising from the rock of Ebaq 9.

Caedus stepped forward, then knelt to better behold it, firm in its impossible defiance of the desolation that surrounded it. He directed all of his considerable presence into it, confirming that it was indeed real, as alive as himself. He beheld perfect, pristine white petals—in the Force, he could feel the vibrant life within down into the fledgling roots that miraculously gripped the charred, faintly radioactive rock, and the incredible delicacy of the thin invisible pocket of atmosphere maintained around it, holding it apart from surrounding vacuum. In the delicate sweep of each shape he recalled nothing so much as the alien cunning and the incredible tenderness he had seen within a certain avian eye.

_The ancient Sith believed that the final revelations of true Force mastery encompassed complete dominion over life and death. I have built this flower, Darth Caedus, in my exile here—each molecule in each cell is of my design—my will gave it life, my will sustains it. My knowledge of the manipulation of chemical compounds began within my own tears, and has broadened, deepened, into the construction of petal, stem, leaf, will take thousands of years, but I will remake this world—flower by flower, I will turn Ebaq 9 into something more beautiful. I will build life in my exile here, weave myself within it, and I will be eternal. This is our way._

Caedus looked up at her, in all of her beguiling mysterious alien ways, and looked down at all of that perfectly reflected in her flower.

_Vergere, Ebaq 9 will be as beautiful as Zonama Sekot._

Her crest turned like a smile.

_No, Darth Caedus. Ebaq 9 will surpass Zonoma Sekot by far. I shall see to that._

_The cost is immense: decades for a single flower, eons for a single world. These are hard lessons._

_It is a hard universe. But it is never without beauty._

_Even in the richness of the struggle. Even in the pain._

_We come full circle—this began with you and pain and I, all those years ago._

_You once wondered if a better way than pain would be my lesson to you, and I have no answer. I have no answer for my daughter._

_Perhaps in that regard you are destined to follow in my footsteps, and plant the seed of the things to come. Perhaps it is not yours to teach. Perhaps that is what your daughter will have to teach you._

_A fitting life's work for a doctor._

_Or for the greatest of all gardeners. Believe in her. Believe in the government you have made. Jacen Solo, I have only one final riddle: for all that we've done, I am a Jedi, and so are you. For all of our gardening, I am a flower, and so are you. We are more than the words they have tried to use to deny us, box us in—we are love, and life is love, and that is contained within each flower, and each sacrifice—for the two are one. You stood in the Well of the World Brain, and decided that you were a judge, and you joined me on my side—not merely the side of the Jedi, or the side of the Sith—the side of the happy warrior, the duty-bound, the great, dancing unconstrained through the spectrum of possibility. Well begun is half done. Darth Caedus, return to your throne, lead, face your last challenge with all the strength you can marshal. I will build flower by flower, and you will build world by world. Stand fast. We move this galaxy towards completion. Remember, your teacher loves you terribly._

_Vergere_—

She stepped forward with the incredible tenderness she so rarely made obvious, pressed one translucent claw flat against his heart and one long hooked finger against his lips. She looked up, into his golden eyes. A single silver tear ran down her face, and in that moment she looked impossibly young, time-lost, as she must have appeared in the days of her first mission to Zonoma Sekot. The tear fell slowly, shaping and reshaping within the gentle pull of gravity, and hit the rock in silence. One claw rose from his heart, tracing the lines of the faded scars that marked his flesh beneath his robes, ran along the scarlet fractures where bones had once snapped. Their gazes met again, and he saw that her eyes glittered with light.

_No more, Darth Caedus. Go. The galaxy is still full of weeds._

She was gone. Darth Caedus stood alone, rigid, eyes blank as he simultaneously reached through waves of memory, forward into shifting future. Around his boots thin fingers of tentative green began to rise from the rock formed many years ago when an A-Wing had burned into the heart of the world, driven by the steady hand of a teacher, who was also a student. She dealt in riddles, which were sacrifices, because she knew that no lesson was truly purchased without pain. She lived as a riddle, died as a riddle, made her own student a riddle—a Jedi and a Sith, a teacher and a gardener, traitor and king, shadowmoth and Skywalker. She saw the truth waiting just beyond the futile endeavors of clumsy words, in the realm of choice and action, in the stunning glorious inseparable realities of pain and triumph, in the utter totality of the Force. She saw that all of it, all of it—resplendent beauty and agony-tinged sacrifices, bittersweet victories, complex and beguiling questions that revealed not the gray between light and dark but rather the entire glorious reality of color—each and every facet—was part of a galaxy becoming only right.

Now he would just have to live up to the beauty of that vision.

Darth Caedus kicked off, and he was once again spiraling through the long silent dark, all flecked with the slim pale green shoots, each one a miracle.


	19. Fools

**XVIII. FOOLS**

_And so it criticized each flower,  
This supercilious seed;  
Until it woke one summer hour,  
And found itself a weed.  
Mildred Howells_

—

Seated on his throne, Darth Caedus loomed in the growing shadow. At his back, beyond the broad floor and high walls of the throne chamber at the peak of Imperial Palace, Coruscant Prime entered the final stages of twilight descent, and the Path of the Gods began to glitter in earnest beyond the dusk. In profile, cast against the endless metal sweep rising like knives into the taciturn sky, he looked like an immense and solitary raven. His golden eyes seethed and churned over his pale, tired face.

Alone, still and calm, he waited for a hint of the ending to come. He felt no fear, no doubt, though he could foresee only the barest glimpses of the future. The only constant in each image and sensation was death.

In the fifteen years since he had taken up the mantle of Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Caedus had witnessed constant visions of his own death. Hundreds of times, in hundreds of ways, he had seen himself skewered on a lightsaber or pierced by an assassin's blaster bolt or whipped out into hard vacuum—in the darkest days, when he had been so absolutely alone, so absolutely isolated from the galaxy around him, he had been made to witness scenes of his own suicide. He had long since chosen to interpret these visions not as absolute but possible fates, markers in the minefield, a vital facet of the complex techniques he used to interpret the future. The death visions had changed in detail and character greatly with the passage of time, though—what had been mercifully brief and fragmentary things during the first years were now, without fail, agonizingly long and extremely vivid, an unfortunate side effect of being the most deeply Force-attuned being in the galaxy, Zonama Sekot excluded. The visions had once spanned a kaleidoscopic array of grisly ends, but gradually they had all fallen away, save one. They had once been rare, nerve-wracking events—now they were constant in his meditation, and he bore them with silent, bottomless resolve, like he bore all of the many pains that had been inflicted upon him as a younger man. Fifteen years since, he still felt a distant but ceaseless skeletal ache redolent of the shattering of most of the bones in his body at the hands of Luke Skywalker.

The visions always had the same perspective, image, end: the lightsaber, falling, down into him, through him—

_The lightsaber came down. It fell slowly, fell like the air itself was thick enough to cut. It drew closer, enveloped the world, but he was ready for it. Rest. He was so ready for rest at last. His work was done, his final lesson taught through his own death, for that was the way of the Sith. Red was everything, crimson all he knew as it made first contact with his skin, and then went through_—

The vision flashed before him once more, rolled in and out like a red tide, and he welcomed it.

Death was, after all, his oldest and closest friend.

He was only barely conscious of the profound power he wielded in the Force as he perceived down into the eddies and currents of the air around him, down through the reinforced durasteel skeleton of Imperial Palace. He waited, listening and feeling. There was very little that Ben Skywalker could hide from Darth Caedus, even when he was concealing his presence, even through all the pretense of deception and counter-deception that characterized any Sith apprenticeship in its final days—Caedus sensed that his apprentice was coming to kill him as clearly as he sensed the beating of his own heart. Ben was walking through the great halls of Imperial Palace, hands still at his side, his uniform pristine, his expression neutral. He bristled with concealed weaponry. There was a manic, quivering euphoria in Ben's shadow-presence; Caedus was surprised by just how familiar it felt. That same sensation had preceded the greatest moments of transformation in his own life: the duel with Mara Jade, the duel with Luke Skywalker, the destruction of Endor, his speech before the Senate on the eve of the birth of an Empire.

It reminded him of the incredible amount he had accomplished in a short fifty years—his mere survival, let alone this ultimate victory, was astronomically improbable in the context of all the history that he had witnessed first-hand. He wore a long account of that improbable survival on his tired frame, in scars and bones that had healed stronger at the break. He wore an account of it, too, within the Force: his presence had deepened and deepened, had expanded into something more like a singularity than an aura. These fifteen years had given him the time and resources to develop his awareness of the Force to an extent that put the ancient Sith to shame. He had undeniably become one of the most powerful Force-users in all of galactic history. He was no mere dabbler—what he had fumbled to understand during his five year journey as a young man he now knew reflexively; all of that inherited knowledge was rivaled by the discoveries that he and Ben had made. It had been so long since he had been able to truly unleash the full extent of his power that in some ways he scarcely even knew what he was now capable of.

Still, he took great comfort in the knowledge that he was mortal yet. To the Yuuzhan Vong, death was a blessed release, the last and greatest gift from the Gods. Even now he wondered that he might still live up to that greatest Sith dream of dominion over life and death: his legacy as a gardener would shape life for thousands of years to come, and few and lucky were beings such as he who could accept the appointed time and place for the laying down of burdens.

Everything had been set along its proper course, no matter what should happen in the next few hours. Together with Ben and Tenel Ka he had designed every facet of the New Galactic Empire so that it might outlive the Old Republic. The final pieces of the new and permanent way would be moving into place right now—the first exchange of one final war would take place that night, Coruscant time, over the frozen Chiss homeworld of Csilla. What had started with the Confederacy would consume the Chiss Ascendancy, then the Unknown Regions. Even by optimistic estimates it would take centuries to conquer and colonize that broad swath of thrillingly unknown space. With entire generations enraptured by the glory of an inexhaustible sea of stars, the Empire would root itself as the Old Republic had, become ingrained as a constant in galactic life, and conclude the era of revolutions that began with Palpatine. There were liberties lost in the transformation that might never return, just as there had been facets of Jacen Solo lost in his ascension, and in truth neither he nor Ben would live to see the galaxy as Caedus had known as a youth—never as utterly and chaotically free—but this too was a sacrifice Darth Caedus had taken up for the sake of his daughter, and all daughters. The final galactic frontier could be thrown open at last—it would be millions of irresistible, pristine worlds for settlement and trade—it would be a galactic lightning rod for men like his father and his uncle, people unspeakably dangerous in the right place and time, but who at the core really just yearned to reach out and touch the stars.

With the Chiss conquered the path would be cleared for one galactic government, which might channel the destructive urges of mortal beings into something greater. The first, clumsiest manifestation of that drive had been devastatingly powerful: it had turned a triumphant Republic into a stable Empire in a day. Taken further, it would unite the major governments of the galaxy completely for the first time in history. It could then be refined, he foresaw, turned into crusader's zeal towards the singular task of extending first tentative fingers to galaxies beyond, and so onward into eternity, a perpetual release valve for the pressures of galactic society. All of this would stewarded and guided by the steady grip of Sith-Emperors, gardener-kings: masters and apprentices, down through the ages, as was dictated by Bane's Rule of Two.

All of this was in motion, all of this had been prepared, and he felt confident leaving the work to come to his apprentice. Ben was ready—in truth far more ready than Caedus himself had been when he had chosen the path of a Dark Lord. All that was left now was the final testing, and the final lesson.

In terms of absolute mastery of the Force Caedus believed himself superior, though not by a great margin, and Ben had several advantages of his own. He had become the better duelist, he was younger, and he had been waiting and preparing singularly for the coming battle for fifteen years, the better part of his life—as Vergere had once reminded him, the Force favored the young. Still, Caedus was not blind to the traces of madness within Ben. Caedus knew intimately the places where Ben was unhinged, knew them because he had made them, and had made them so that they might heal stronger. There had been madness in Caedus, too, in those first days, that first clumsy grasping at greatness, that had been purified in the taking of the true name, and in the discovery of the deeper powers within himself, and in the realization that he was not a man alone against a galaxy.

Many years ago, Caedus had pledged that he would die well. If this was to be the time and the place, then he had made his peace. He had straddled eras, and the history he had planned would remember him as victor. The way forward for the next generation, for Allana and all the rest, was as brilliantly clear and ordered as the starscape that had called out to him after Luke Skywalker's death, begging to be taken.

There were only a few things left to do, now, before the Rule of Two returned once more, as it always must, towards beginning. He reached out tenderly to the presences his wife on Hapes, his daughter on the other side of Coruscant preparing for her rounds in the wards. He grasped those presences and held them close, and he whispered that he loved both of them more terribly than they could ever know.

Tenel Ka reached out in return, and embraced him without fear or hesitation or regret—she had become his solace, his partner, fifteen years ago, had saved him from a loneliness and a desperation far worse than death. She had accepted this too as necessary according to the visions they shared—there were no secrets between them. But only now did she tenderly reveal to him that should he die, she was prepared to live as the high priestess of his memory, as martyr and emperor.

Allana reached back out to him in the Force with only her instinct and latent potential as a guide, expanding her presence in the Force to meet him and hold him and say that she loved him, even though she did not fully understand. More than ever he was certain of the greatness within her, brilliant and pure and whole, so like Anakin, his brother. The future would be in good hands. It wasn't much of a goodbye, which in that moment hurt him more than any broken bone ever had, but it was one final cost to pay for her safety, for her happiness—those would endure, and those were his real and final gift to her.

He lingered with them, until he once again felt strong enough to return to himself. The two masked, cloaked Imperial Guardsmen at the entrance to the throne room silently entered, opening the great obsidian doors, bowed low, and departed. He had told them with a mental prod they were to allow Ben Skywalker to enter, and that they were not to intervene in what followed.

This was to be a battle between the Master, the one to embody power, and the Apprentice, the one to crave it, and no other.

The inky figure of Ben Skywalker strode down the long, spare marble chamber, head high. Darth Caedus looked upon his creation—felt every part of his Force presence coiled like a predator before the strike—and saw that it was good.

The apprentice came before his master and knelt low.

"Apprentice," Caedus said.

"Master," Ben replied.

One way or another, this was to be the last time Ben Skywalker would kneel before Darth Caedus.

"Is everything in place?" Caedus asked.

"The fleet is moving into position over Csilla. The Chiss are as good as their word—no preemptive strike."

"What will you tell the Senate?"

"About Csilla?"

"About me."

At this Ben smiled.

"A cowardly attack by my father and his Jedi, a great crime, but in tragedy there is a seed of hope. We shall repay. We will not be distracted from our mission; we will break the Jedi like we will break the Chiss. We will never forget our Emperor, the greatest leader we have ever known, made martyr for his selfless cause. And so forth."

Caedus smiled in turn.

"My dear student," he said, "That is similar in the essentials to what I am going to tell them about you. Are you absolutely sure that you are ready for this, Ben?"

Ben stared up at him with alien, golden eyes.

"Of course. I am ready. The first lesson you taught me was the necessity of sacrifice."

"And the final lesson I have to teach you is the necessity of sacrifice. I have planned for this moment for a very long time."

"As have I. I am ready to take my name."

"That is the way of the Sith—you will try. Rise, Ben Skywalker."

Ben stood, his lean frame all angles. He looked wolflike in the rankless Imperial Guard uniform he wore beneath his black cloak, his eyes wide in a sort of ecstatic, religious zeal. He was clenching and unclenching his fists.

"Ben Skywalker has been a long time dying. That name no longer reflects what I am. I am ready to be something greater, Darth Caedus."

Caedus stood in turn, his robes shifting like fanning flame, and his lightsaber fell into his hand. He rolled his shoulders as the first precognitive images of the battle to come flashed before his eyes. For an instant he was outside of himself, watching the Dark Lord of the Sith, Galactic Emperor, rising against the profile of Coruscant, wreathed within intricate patterns of golden threads that were invisible only to those without eyes to see. His lightsaber hissed to life, a constant crimson-white against the perpetual shifting supernova of his robes. His face was cast in shadow, unreadable but for the golden eyes and the glint of a familiar grin, and with great pleasure he found that in that solitary instant he had become dread incarnate.

"And yet, from the first, everything I told you was a lie. Every question was been a trick. There is no truth in me. I am Darth Caedus. What are you?"

The Dark Lord of the Sith took a step forward, which carried a great and unnatural weight in the Force. He felt as if with each motion he were shedding the burden of entire ages. He blinked, and was watching Luke Skywalker framed against the starscape—he blinked, and was once again watching what had once been Luke's son, but was now something much more magnificent—something terrifying and wonderful, waiting to be named.

"I'm through with riddles," Ben said.

"Show me," Darth Caedus replied.

The apprentice had never before felt so incredibly alive as he did in that first moment: alone, defiant, calling out the challenge, his challenge, with every part of his being. There was no fear, no hesitation, no doubt—his entire life had been preparation for what was about to come. No mother, no father, no god, no master, only a student surpassing his teacher. He did not keep himself from trembling as he made ready to act, from shivering all over with the sensation that fate was offering one fair, beckoning hand to him—in the threads, he could see himself at the center of every golden path, the locus of all ways forward. He inhaled, then exhaled, steadying himself, burning the glory of the moment into his memory forever. Like serendipity and fate and prescience had run together, his plan of attack was immediately clear, his presence a thing of thunder, every muscle in his body humming with coiled energy. He was ready to dive into the pain and discover what he truly was.

He ignited his lightsaber, too, snarling red-white, shifted his foothold for maximum leverage, and then he launched himself forward. Darting left, then right, he was up the dozen shallow steps to the throne in two bounds that took an instant, and with the third footfall he carried his momentum into the first strike. His master met it, and they were locked, divided by a veil of hissing sparks. Caedus was smiling beyond that veil, effortlessly countering the immense weight the apprentice brought to bear. They were in equilibrium for a long moment, each one pressing and pressed, exactly matched, two sides of a whole—as perfect as the Rule of Two.

The equilibrium broke when the apprentice blinked, opened his eyes once more, saw the bloodied face of his mother beyond the crossed red blades. In that instant, Caedus mounted an immense Force push that the apprentice was just barely too slow to counter—he flew backward, and Caedus darted forward with him, lunging, laughing. The apprentice hit the marble floor on his back and immediately threw himself into a Force-assisted roll to the side, just in time to escape the swing that would have bisected him, but instead merely burned a deep gash into the stone—the second swing, which was a continuation of the first, he met with not a moment to spare, caught it on the tip of his blade and batted it away—in retaliation, he raised his free hand and unleashed a burst of Force lightning aimed at his master's chest. Caedus staggered back a step—he had absorbed the energy harmlessly, but he had also lost his momentum. The trade-off gave the apprentice just enough time to throw himself back onto his feet and lift his blade to meet the next swing.

The next swing didn't come. What came instead was an immense Force shove from Caedus fueled by the power of Ben's own lightning. It almost knocked him back down—he stood against the onslaught, rooting himself within the Force, but the several meter thick floor-to-ceiling transparisteel viewport not six feet behind him could not marshal such strength. It cracked, then shattered, and blew outward, exposing the throne room to the howling, freezing wind—the initial change in pressure at this altitude, as the warm air was sucked out, would have carried two normal men with it into Coruscant's stratosphere in an instant.

But these were a far cry from normal men. When the pressure equalized, they were both still standing. For a moment they stood watching each other, their cloaks whipping in the brutal wind.

They had not yet really begun to fight; only now was the symphony beginning to thunder into the movement. These were certainly the most powerful Sith to rise in centuries, perhaps the most powerful Sith to rise in history—both had realized the full potential of the Skywalker line, and any battle between them was fated to be far, far more than a crude struggle of the flesh. They fought with blades of burning light, but they fought too through a snarl of shifting golden timelines, they fought mental battles on a plane only tangentially tied to the highest heights of Coruscant.

They were both agile above all else, moving serpentine through the dozen different fronts of the greater battle. At that moment Ben sucked thousands of razor-sharp shards from the shattered viewport back into the chamber like a hail of invisible crystalline knives, even as he batted away Caedus's relentless mental probing. Moving with inhuman speed, Caedus weaved within the storm and Ben's physical onslaught, evaporating with his lightsaber swaths of transparisteel moving within hurricane winds that unimpeded would have reduced him in seconds to an unrecognizable pile of bone and ragged flesh. The long tapestries adorning the walls were instantly reduced to tatters, and the smooth cold stone of the walls and floors rapidly became chipped and pitted. Whole sections of the abstract crystalline mural adorning the floor were uprooted and taken into the storm, so that the dusk glittered and flashed.

The ceiling of the throne room weighed thousands of tons, rising to form the jagged tip of Imperial Palace. It was an engineering marvel composed of dozens and dozens of meters of reinforced durasteel and yorik coral, designed to withstand everything from nuclear blasts to starship collisions to prolonged orbital bombardment.

Caedus ripped it from its moorings with an ear-shattering scream of twisting metal, as if it were nothing more than rusty scrap, exposing the chamber fully to the whipping winds of high atmosphere and venting the transparisteel storm out into the twilight.

The act was visible for miles and miles to those with a view of New Imperial Palace, the tallest edifice on a world composed solely of varying degrees of tall edifice—it was as if the tip of the daggerlike structure had disappeared within the Path of the Gods, which was coming into its full nighttime brilliance crystal by rainbow crystal.

The Path had been scattered by the arrival of Zonoma Sekot many years ago, when this world was still known as Yuuzhan'tar, Crèche of the Gods. But it was never destroyed—complex gravitational patterns within the larger system had merely rewoven and realigned it with a more wild and unrestrained beauty, as if the font from which stars came had impossibly spilled forth into the night sky for a few miraculous hours.

When the blades met, then parted once more, Caedus was watching the Path for the first time above a world turned into jungle, with Vergere silent at his side. How many nights had he watched that Path, so real and so beautiful he could almost see Yun-Yuuzhan striding down it, slicing himself away with each motion, sacrificing himself as the seed of each star and each world?

Life was very beautiful, and very painful.

With the carefully engineered framework of the throne room fatally undermined, both Caedus and Ben ripped tonnage of mangled durasteel support from the sagging walls, moving girders and struts using the Force with the precision of actors in the battle all their own, shielding master or apprentice from attack, sweeping down in strikes that pulverized the cold stone when they missed their targets, often by centimeters.

They were both wreathed in coronas of cold blue, malleable Force storms that served as both shield and weapon. The ruined throne room smelled overpoweringly of ozone, and when Caedus and Ben pressed close they were lost to conventional sight as the twin storms coalesced into blinding electrical inferno. That danger was negligible for beings as experienced as they in the absorption and release of energy through the Force; the most notable byproduct of the electrical exchanges was agony—maintaining such a Force storm, let alone bringing it to bear against another, was torture—compounded many times over by the incredible physical and mental strain both were subjecting themselves to in order to take part in the dance.

But all this was no major hindrance for Darth Caedus and Ben Skywalker, who had spent eternities in the Embrace. Like that most infamous of torture implements, that implement which had been the seed of all of this, they both thrived on pain. They ate it. They were riding pain higher and higher, into states of Force hypersensitivity—it was a curious and unique property of their struggle that each agony one inflicted only made the other more powerful in turn.

Still, they both knew techniques against which there was no defense—master and apprentice were fighting through hallucinations individual and shared, so that Ben Skywalker was blinking away a hailstorm of empty green eyes even as he was bringing down a durasteel girder like a piston, which Caedus sidestepped without a glance—he dodged it so narrowly, with such economy of motion, that the impact of the steel with the floor nearly caught the fabric of his cloak. A much greater threat to him was the ear-shattering, omnipresent, lurid death wail of Nelani Dinn, which was on the verge of breaking his concentration, a guarantee of swift death. They were so intertwined within each other's minds, so intimately locked in the struggle, that they fought over the wall of the dead Ganner had built before the Well of the World Brain, and through Centerpoint chambers caked red with viscera, and in the swirling dust of ancient tombs on Korriban. They were together in the electric storm again as their lightsabers met, eyes tight shut against the incredible light, in truth unsure of where one ended and the other began—apart again as tons of rapidly approaching durasteel wearing the guise of sand dragon talons forced a mutual retreat.

They were practitioners of battle meditation in the truest sense, as it had been used in the forgotten early days of the Jedi and Sith, and unconsciously at first they were reaching out to the bottomless well of life on Coruscant. First within Imperial Palace, but reaching out block by block, down into the Undercity and up into the skyways, they were harnessing the denseness of life to sustain themselves, as Caedus had discovered in the wake of Mara Jade's death and Ben had learned in conflict over Centerpoint. So it was that the battle became not just a struggle between two individuals but a war all its own, as two opposing beings of power began to exert their will on a massive reserve of available minds. In an expanding radius racing across the surface of Coruscant, pliant minds flickered and then receded into unconsciousness so that they might better lend their power—meager individually but enormous in the aggregate—to the Sith who had claimed it. So it was that the first fires began to rage on the surface of Coruscant as a result of skyways reduced in moments to crisscrossing storms of flaming wreckage.

They were reaching deeper into it than either ever had before, and they discovered in parallel the possibility that there was no bottom to the Force, no endpoint. Though they were burning with the power, the well they drank from was inexhaustible. They were coming into their potential as infinite beings in tandem, racing past every measurable boundary Force users of the past had understood. Caedus found himself to his great surprise thrillingly near the power he had known ending Onimi—the power which he had known with certainty he would strive for for the rest of his life and fail to reach. He was so tantalizingly close, pouring every part of himself and the immense Coruscant neural network behind him into an agonizing crawl deeper, closer to that moment where he had been the balance point, and had tipped the scales forever.

And the apprentice was laughing, and laughing, for he had never before felt anything like this—he had only dreamed. This was so much more than what Jacen had promised, and more even than the miracles that the young Ben Skywalker, broken by the Embrace, had promised himself in turn. With each pivot he was shattering the linear flow of time, and with each footfall he was drawing Coruscanti lives into himself, and in each meeting of blades he was coming infinitesimally closer to becoming the Lord of Pain.

Ben had wanted to rule pain in those first days, to end suffering, and he was coming into the power that could make it so. Like a balance point at the center of existence, where he could feel the material of reality starting to fray, he imagined reshaping worlds and nerve endings, and abolishing the ache of life.

If there was truly no end, if they truly had abandoned all limits, then Ben Skywalker wondered if this fight could ever be won. What began at dusk continued now in darkest night—though their capacity for experience had grown profoundly nonlinear—and even hours on had no sign whatsoever of stopping. They were too powerful, too closely matched, and in visions they were still fighting in the dust and ashes of a dead world, absent even stars in the sky. He felt himself becoming locked in his own prescience, and it was as if each of his actions had been appointed and apportioned, and he was merely the actor reciting them. He was experiencing among many simultaneous visions one of the golden threads flowing through the throne room, flowing past the combatants between frozen forks of blue electricity, like the lines that stars became in the first moment of entry into Hyperspace. He was fighting and fighting viciously, but too he was walking idly through the threads, letting them pulse and coil and flow around his extended hands.

He then did something unfathomably dangerous, unprecedented in the history of those who wielded the Force: he clenched his fists around those threads, feeling that they burned him, and, having taken them, he pulled. Daring, even reckless—but in the act, as he had foreseen, he saw victory opening to him. In the corporeal world, the arcane backlash of the act gouged crisscrossing burning scars into Ben's hands and arms, synthetic and real flesh both, but he scarcely noticed.

The lurch in fate and time and destiny itself blinded the prescience of Caedus for a pivotal moment, and Ben's parry hit through electrical inferno, slicing through the phantom armor of interwoven amphistaffs that his master wore, and carved a deep gouge in Caedus's abdomen.

Ben had not hit anything vital—or he thought he hadn't, because by then he knew better than to trust what his perceptions told him was reality—but he sensed that an end was in sight, that through his gamble the stasis had been shattered.

The wound did not slow Caedus, or restrict his motion, or limit his presence. Instead, his being exploded outwards once more, reaching out beyond the horizon of Coruscant in battle symphony, deepening the mental maze they were fighting through. Ben Skywalker was a watchful and clever apprentice, and he used this lesson—following the next exchange, which made his teeth vibrate as he caught the blade of Caedus on his own, he withdrew, letting his master's lightsaber bite into his intentionally exposed flank.

This too became part of the ritual, a give and take that was part of the dance, sacrifice by sacrifice, a mounting step as they raced along a vibroblade's edge, bleeding themselves for strength. The finesse and art involved were immense, in the weaknesses they exposed just barely in order to suffer wounds that were not mortal. Now the battle had an endpoint, a finish coming ever closer, for things of flesh could not long withstand the unrelenting punishment they were consuming.

They were burning out as they were peaking, dying and surging with each wound, enraptured. Their bodies were failing, but their bodies were now by far the least part of themselves.

This was the challenge, multifaceted and perfect, and Ben Skywalker's mastery was self-evident. Darth Caedus was very proud, and very ready to lose, but for the sudden and growing pit of apprehension he found in his heart with the exponential expansion of his power. In his dying frame he found himself, against all his own predictions and preparations, unsatisfied and unprepared. He had never been so prescient as he had been in those moments, so close to what he had been ending Onimi that he could once again sense the greater order of the universe, the plans and patterns that shaped all things, and what he found somehow did not surprise him.

This battle, after all, was part of a larger war. The reason for all of this, from this name to this palace and this Empire and this world and this apprentice, was a father's wish to spare his daughter an awful fate, and keep his promise to her.

A father's heart was made to be twisted.

Darth Caedus was discovering within blades and lightning and a burning city world that he could not let it end like this. As Vergere had predicted, all the ends he could scry for Allana at the apex of his power dragged her inescapably into the consuming cycle of Skywalkers, in spite of all plans wrought and empires built—in spite of his certainty and Ben's certainty to not involve her. Doubly damned—he would come to break his promise, and teach her how to inflict pain, or Ben would teach her, and so much that was priceless in her would be lost to his tender mercies. If Allana had to take up the burden of her name, then all of the sacrifices would be for nothing—he would have given away his entire life for a dream, and then given the dream away. Vergere had said that in teaching her he would keep his promise to all daughters, but in this, as in all things, she lied. Everything he had fought to stop would happen again if he had to teach Allana, and he now had the power to see that it would happen again and again, as far as he could see, a cycle of death and sorrow and waste that would curse his descendants until the end of time. He had taken his Sith name for the sake of saving her, abandoned who he was, and he was not prepared for so long a journey to end in tragedy for the one Skywalker who had come out of so much blood and terror innocent, wishing only to heal, as deserving of the right to choose her own path in life as any other soul. He was surging again in the Force and the fight in his dawning fury and his waning life—he could not and would not let his daughter be trapped. The death of Ben Skywalker was no longer the goal—at least, not until he could use this power to find a way out of the trap of fate that had long since enclosed his family.

In all the arcana he knew, all the futures he saw, racing through flows of time, there was nothing to be done—he was already at his limit, the end of the Force, dying faster now than he could gain, his desperate grasp falling just short of the power that ended Onimi, and had changed the galaxy. He was charging through the flow—on Korriban at a hundred different moments through ages he was wringing the necks of the long line of his predecessors, demanding their knowledge, knowing the possible consequences of his actions and still throttling them, and they were all only laughing, until their laughing began to turn into guttural choking sounds. Yoda, his uncle's great teacher, so much diminished in his sad small home on Dagobah, only gave him a small shrug. "Do, or do not. There is no 'try'." The Aing-Tii were sympathetic—he had finally begun to see, they said, how atrocious slavery was—but they too said that what he wanted was beyond the power of the living. Such things were the exclusive domain of Those Who Dwell Beyond the Veil.

It had been a long time since he had been so desperate—so close to the yawning terror of failure in spite of a lifetime's furious effort towards his singular purpose. Only once before had he been more in sync with the Force, as close to the peak as he was now, and he had never realized just how powerless he was to fix the privations at the heart of fate. After all the threads he had danced in, weaved and cut, he was far too late to confront the possibility that so long as there were threads at all his daughter would still suffer for his hubris. His life had been a farce—and Ben's life would be a farce, too, when in time Ben healed enough to truly care about other people again—and so would be the lives of all Skywalker descendants to follow. The nature of the cage had become clear to him: no conspiracy could break it, and no strategy or bargain or sacrifice could purchase an exit from it. There was no way out for any of them.

In that moment, as he was distantly aware Ben's lightsaber was burning into his shoulder, far deeper than he had intended to let it, he came to a realization.

Death was, after all, the oldest and closest friend he still had.

He was willing do the impossible, if only he could become able. He would die a thousand deaths. He would bind himself to any agony, for any length of time, a sacrifice to put all other sacrifices to shame—if he could just reach the power he had known as a young man once again, the power that had let him reverse fate, and use it—only to save them. To save Allana, and all the daughters, and then lie down, and accept the judgment that he had long since richly deserved.

But he was pushing against the limitations of mortality, drawing deeper and deeper, keenly aware that he was no longer young, keenly aware that this chance would not come again, in life or whatever would come for him after life. He found himself at the heart of it, perilously close to the gravity well of his line's tragic history. If he failed here, if untempered Skywalker blood remained to turn the cycle, then no Empire or Sith, no time or action, could fix the heart of man—it would never end, the consumption and waste and destruction would go on as long as life remained to destroy life.

The simple, cruel beauty of the thing occurred to him in the form of a prophecy he had made when he was a young man: he would spend the rest of his life trying, and failing, to once again know the power that had ended Onimi.

Something in him relaxed, and something else was resolved. Perhaps a part of him had always known that it would have to come to this, and have to end like this. Perhaps he had always known that there was no way out.

There was no use struggling against it; that power was something unique and precious, of a place not made for men. This was a battle that he could not win. In spite of that, he was ready.

Now he could see the end of the golden path that had brought him here, to the threshold of death's door. Where threads had branched and branched through his many schemes and plots, the grand galactic conspiracy he had made, now they all ran together into one last very simple choice:

Do, or do not.

Darth Caedus abandoned each and every one of his manifold defenses, and left himself utterly at the mercy of Ben Skywalker.

In the second after he did so he was blown up and back as if he had taken a torpedo to the chest, shattering the better part of his ribcage along lines of structural weakness originating in his struggle with Ben's father fifteen years prior—all the willpower he had been exerting to cancel out Ben's Force pressure had disappeared. He flew several meters before landing in a long skid, landing on his mangled shoulder, letting the lightsaber fall from his hands, where the whipping wind took it out into the night. He wouldn't need it again. All he could see, beyond the ruins of the throne chamber, were the myriad patterns of the Path spilled out across a night sky alive with stars and signs. He was smiling.

Then the agony washed over him, bleared the starscape and the Path of the Gods into things of shrewd promise, where light twisted in the shadow. He was feeling not his pain alone but the suffering of all the life on the planet below, who he had consumed and used and made to die for his purpose. It was an atrocity to crown a lifetime of atrocities. He was an enormously guilty man.

Ben could, of course, have killed Darth Caedus in a thousand different ways before he even hit the ground, but he hesitated, unsure if he had been caught in the snare of a false reality.

"It's not supposed to end like this," Ben said.

"Nothing ends," Darth Caedus replied. His eyes were glowing bright and getting brighter still, like inside of him a fire was being stoked, but he did not move.

He was still on the floor, taking shallow breaths against ruined ribs, and the transformation in his presence frightened Ben. There was indeed no defense, no pressure demanding counterpressure, no mental tangle, no writhing dance within golden strands or cold blue electrical sparks or discarded pieces of durasteel. He was simply open, in all the transcendent power he had reached, as close as he had come to the impossible, to the universe. Ben found it terrifying.

He was upon his master in a single Force-assisted bound, planting himself over the still form with his lightsaber, inches away from the heart in one smooth, artful motion.

"This is all part of it," Darth Caedus said.

"Sith do not surrender. I did not expect you to lie down and die like this. This serves neither of us. You have failed to satisfy the conditions set forth by the Rule of Two—the conditions we agreed to when my apprenticeship began."

"But it's not the end. Not at all. I am not going to fail." A silent shudder of laughter wracked Caedus. "I have not surrendered, and I will not, now or ever. Listen: I have a riddle for you, Ben Skywalker."

Ben read that inscrutable presence as fast as he could, trying to divine the trick—read all of his master, which was being offered openly and freely, tearing past a father's love and a husband's devotion and a student's lust for knowledge, a warrior's fury and a leader's moderation, a dying man's regret— and only at the very endpoint, the very culmination of all that made Darth Caedus, the betrayer, did he know that he was about to make the mistake that would spell the end of all his dreams. In truth the very last thing he wanted to do was kill Darth Caedus at that most pivotal of all pivotal moments.

Horror washed over Ben as he screamed at his dying body to get away from Caedus, as he screeched with every impulse in his adrenaline-drenched neural system to pull himself and the lightsaber he gripped out and away with all the strength his body and the Force could provide. But now Caedus was putting every solitary iota of his incredible will into pulling Ben's lightsaber down, into himself, as Ben tried to seize it. Centimeter by contested centimeter inch it twitched downward. That essence of the soul he had seen in Caedus at the very endpoint trumped all of Ben's prodigious hate and fear and will to power. Every bone in Ben's smoldering hands, originals and titanium replicas both, shattered in a staccato burst of wet snaps under the pressure being exerted. All of their mutual willpower was pressing and pressed. The balance shifted.

The lightsaber came down. It fell slowly, fell like the air itself was thick enough to cut. It drew closer, enveloped the world, but Caedus was ready for it. Rest. He was so ready for rest at last.

_If only._

His life's work was done, his final lesson taught through his own death, for that was the way of the Sith. Red was everything, crimson all he knew as it made first contact with his skin, and then went through—

His back arched involuntarily, like a string gone taut, thrusting his arms backwards in a simulacrum of embrace. He flickered like a malfunctioning holovid, involuntarily refracting himself across time and space, and now his eyes, beacons of undiluted gold so bright they shone like twin suns, began to smoke and hiss. He was still smiling, still shaking with laughter, as the oxygen burned out of his blood.

"What do you call the corpse of a blind Emperor, who lost his heart?" Caedus asked.

"Oh, no," Ben Skywalker said, staggering back, trying to mount his defenses but knowing that against what was coming there could be no defense. "Oh, no."

Caedus's eyes, absent iris or even pupil, all molten white-gold, burst into flame. He was at the end of prophecy—all of his many forms of prescience had failed, and for the last time he was once again the wondering man watching far stars. Fire overtook his vision, and he saw only blackness. He took a final ragged breath. He felt that he had been happy, and that he was happy still. It had been a fight worth fighting—if only he had been a better man.

Blindness was the shedding of a false and limiting sensation, and immolation brought with it the ability to focus himself as he once had, when he had tipped the balance of the galaxy in his favor those many years before. The night was boundless, and his sensitivity for the suffering of the life below was keener for his kinship with it, for the full knowledge of his own brokenness. Everything was so clear: problem and solution, weed and flower—and the cost would be great, but he was both willing and able to pay it. The life was burning out of him; the point of no return came up, was behind him, was gone. For the first time in a long time, the aching in his bones waned.

His joke wasn't very good. But then, they never had been.

"God," Darth Caedus said.

—

Listen.

A blind man stands in the memory of the Well of the World Brain. He is unarmed. He is smiling. He is dying, and nothing in the entire spectrum of existence will prevent it.

He is so, so dangerous.

The blind man has chosen the battlefield for symbolic significance. He has gone under in this place once before, and now he is prepared to do so again. All of that makes no difference to the other entity, which has been waiting for him since the day he was born.

The other entity is death—purportedly the oldest and closest friend of the blind man, though death does not recognize him. To death, the blind man is nothing more or less than another soul of trillions, strong and lean and strange—somehow black and bright all at once—but to be taken under nonetheless. The blind man knows this. He is nevertheless pleased to meet such a dear friend in person at last, even if their friendship had only amounted to a long and mutually profitable correspondence by proxy.

Death does not speak, and it does not move. It is not even truly composed of matter—it is a whiteness brighter than stars, brighter than supernovas, empty and ancient—as bright as the beginning. It is a concept given life, the central organ of an invisible and penetrating aura that binds all living things called the Force. Within the white, the very heart of the logic of the Force is contained: death becomes life, in a great turning wheel. The blind man in truth has the ability to see and understand this—his vision is no longer of the sort that can burn.

The blind man moves first, drawing closer. At this, death hesitates, for it has never before in the precedent of time witnessed something of this shape and form—something with the power to move in its dominion, to hold back the inevitable moment of ending and rebirth.

The blind man says:

"Let's be friends."

The blind man has come to understand that in life those words had been his greatest strength, far more so than any other power he had cultivated. Now they would serve him in the final test. He repeats it:

"Let's be friends."

Those words have brought him here, to this moment, to this meeting, through decades painted with blood and struggle. The blind man had once been a boy, solitary and shy, heir to a frightening legacy in a cruel and fickle galaxy, and he had tendered offers of friendship so that he might feel less alone. The first offer had been to the permeating and piercing sense of life he could feel within and around him, which he had learned to call the Force. He knows that his offer now is really the culmination of that first friendship of his life, because the blind man knows that the entity before him is the heart of the Force. It is the instrument through which life permeates the void.

Death is of course neither good or evil. It acts without discrimination or remorse, as universal constant—as it is it is not, strictly speaking, even sentient—it is discovering its own capacity for surprise and curiosity as the blind man comes closer. Death is finding that it has been waiting for a being with the capacity to understand as long as time itself has existed. It is ultimately as susceptible to the offer of the blind man as the World Brain and Alema Rar and Tahiri and Tenel Ka and Ben and all the rest had been, as they had all felt in solitude and suffering and doubt: it is, finally, lonely. It is being personified in that moment, as it hears its first words, and starts to realize shape and thought and time.

Their friendship begins. The first thing the blind man understands is that even as death hesitates here, it is moving in every other galaxy in an infinite universe, reaping. The blind man begins to learn. He is there with his teacher at every moment in the history of the universe, cleaving and breathing life into the deeps. And death is learning that in a span of time so small as to be incomprehensible to an ageless entity a Jedi and Sith and Emperor, among other names, could take form, could suffer, could come into such power as to reach this place and make the most audacious request of all time.

The blind man is a student, and a teacher, and he is already putting lessons to use, changing from the flickering shadow of a single life into something to rival the scale and shape of death itself. He is something new. He is breaking cycles. Death acts and moves and speaks in Force arcana far beyond the comprehension of mortal beings, mechanisms that shift century-spanning eddies and currents in the Force, mechanisms that manipulate matter on levels beneath quarks and gluons.

The blind man is discovering the fundamental laws of the universe, and death is discovering for the first time the traffics and ways of life and thought, coming into a facsimile of true consciousness.

They are both so fascinated in their mutual apprenticeships that time passes—wordlessly they become intertwined, and death for the first time takes a shape so as to better understand its ward, and it comes to be that death is infinitesimally close to the blind man in a posture of embrace, a hair's breadth away from the touch that would subsume his soul within the ocean of churning life and death.

The blind man is verifying his most transcendent discoveries during the battle that had ended with his arrival here. He is looking into a speaking mirror, watching and becoming. Death reaps at every instant in a universe that has no end, and he is struggling to hold on to his consciousness in the face of a true vision of infinity. Death too is struggling with consciousness—it has never before understood concepts like agony, or joy, that it discovers fully borne within the presence of the human being that calls himself Darth Caedus, and it has never applied the context of a life lived to the flow of life culled and sustained.

They are both finding new dimensions of suffering, racing towards an end that neither fully understands, for their friendship has no true precedent in the history of time. Death reaps, and now it feels each death as it does so, just as Darth Caedus has reaped and felt. Darth Caedus explains, as he learns, in that facsimile the Well of the World Brain where years ago he chose his side in the battle to fix the galaxy, the deeply human and mortal concepts of a gardener and his flowers and his weeds.

It is with those simple concepts, and the manifold repercussions of those concepts, that they reach the exalted point, which has taken infinities spanning an instant, where each has full knowledge of the other.

What comes next surprises neither entity.

Darth Caedus is a student, and a teacher, and a friend.

But for all that, he is a traitor. Death is his friend, and it is also his final enemy, the core cause of the dismal cycle that had taken Jacen Solo and Ben Skywalker and all the Jedi and Sith before them and ruined them—the cycle that would turn again, and take Allana down into the darkness. The first time Caedus had been here, when he still called himself Jacen Solo, he had convinced the World Brain that for all the betrayal and all the sadness and all the struggle, the galaxy was still made of love. Somehow, he had forgotten.

He finds within himself power on a universal scale, the old familiar power of ending Onimi, and with it he closes the small but unfathomably significant gap between them, and then he is subsuming death in the moment that death comes to understand the concept and lesson of betrayal—knowing that for the blind man this is to be the last and greatest of sacrifices. Darth Caedus is dying, the very last dredges of mortality being flayed from him, for that primal being has come into the full realization that something as dangerous to the order of things as Darth Caedus must not be allowed to live. They are consuming and consumed. They are struggling—student and teacher, surpassing. They are turning and turning, in a great wheel. In them the mechanics of fate and reality are being tested, weighed, canceling out. They fall into the pool, and struggle in the viscous orange slime where the World Brain had once embraced Jacen Solo.

In his mind's eye, Darth Caedus is seeing two shadows in embrace, the silhouettes of knives rising from both of their backs. He is very very close to dying, or perhaps already dead—he is unsure, now, the distinction is too fine—but death was always inevitable, not even unwanted, exactly—the least of costs.

Still, betrayers smile in tandem, sad and solitary. The lesson has been dearly learned. Love can be terrifying, but for all that it is also the most wonderful thing.

Still, Caedus is remembering the first time he was broken. That was the first pivotal spin of the cycle to end cycles, the first of the turns that would shatter the wheel.

That was when he learned to eat the white.

He is remembering when he abandoned who he was, and through the incredible agony of it all forged a new vision of himself bathed in blood, branded and born with the sole purpose of saving the lives of daughters.

It starts where it ends.

The wheel cracks. The wheel shatters.

Darth Caedus is, at long last, dead.

But Darth Caedus was never anything more or less than a mask, a cloak, a symbol, an excuse.

Darth Caedus is dead, but Jacen Solo remains, cradled in what is left of his friend, which had lifted him from the thick warmth of the Well's fluid to the shore with its dying act. He awakens again, and out past the great fallen doors of the Well of the World Brain there is an infinity of white. It hurts.

When he finds himself written within stellar winds, and the hearts of stars, and the void of deep space, and in all things that have lived, live, and will live, the first sensation the pain invokes is hunger.

He finds that he can overtake the whiteness. There is no longer a distinction between a beginning or an end, it is all contained within him—it is as an infinite being that he discovers once more awareness, and he wills himself to act. He has chosen, freely chosen, to become something new and absolutely unique in the history of existence, something terrifying and wonderful.

He had done so many horrible, unjustifiable things, and the cost had been so awful—all his pretense of benefit outweighing harm had been utterly destroyed with the sheer flood of total knowledge that entered him—he had grown brutal and cold, most of all to those he should have loved deepest, had let himself become more and more a conniving and paranoid creature, murderer and dictator, and he had failed again and again to see the immense inherent goodness within all life that he had known with such certainty as a boy.

Ever since Nelani, he has been running from justice.

It is about time for him to stop.

Jacen Solo solemnly judges himself for his many crimes, finds himself ultimately guilty of each, in spite of excuses and prescience and self-preservation—all masks and gardens and sacrifices.

For his crimes, he sentences himself to eternity, fixing.

He grins, like his father once grinned.

It has been a long time coming—how long had he yearned to join Ganner in the dance? For a long time he had deluded himself into believing that he was the dancer dancing, from that moment when he had known during his final fight with Luke Skywalker that he would win, and go on to win. Only now does Jacen Solo understand what Ganner's choice really meant.

Alone, he leaves the Well of the World Brain, and enters the conflagration, and he is remembering a man who had decided that none would pass. Ganner protected Jacen; finally, Jacen will protect all that lives.

The choice has been made. Jacen Solo acts.

—

Jacen Solo died with one final silent laughing shudder, slipped the shackles of mortality, and entered into a new and previously inconceivable plane of existence with the Force quaking at his touch, like a symphony of seismic events where each sound, perfect in time and tone, was breaking worlds. The Jedi had believed in becoming one with the Force, but their oneness was the loss of self within the stream of life. Jacen Solo was not a drop in an ocean, he did not cup his hands at the shore; he was the Lord of Storms; he was the Font of Life. He knew the ancient and inviolable rules of the universe, and reached the end of understanding in a blazing moment of pure truth.

All the tumblers of good and evil were balanced within himself, and he was the balance, and he was the breaking of the balance forever. Now and for all time, truth and beauty would be united.

Jacen Solo immersed himself in the Dawn, and immolated himself in the fire of time's birth until he was unblemished as the first moment of creation.

He shed false skins and names, let the lies of Empire and Sith fall away, was reborn as the essence of a great tapestry of light.

He saw at last that the gift of Force sensitivity was indeed neither curse nor duty, but rather a promise, the first inkling of the final transcendence just beginning to glimmer within the mortal races of the galaxy. He looked upon the universe, all of it, and found it so much like himself that he realized once more his kinship with all things, eternal and temporary, for the first time since his youth. Life was impossible, precious, miraculous; he had only to reach out to save it.

He existed simultaneously at all moments, refracted across infinity, so that Vergere's impossible sparkling tears ran down into the knife piercing Luke Skywalker's back, so that all the dead glassy eyes were a turning wheel of flame, so that he walked concurrently upon the desolate and forgotten surface of ancient Yuuzhan'tar, a galaxy away, and the abundant living beauty of its child, Zonama Sekot. He stood with the first men, on their first world, long forgotten in the tenuous and fickle memory of their descendants—he was with them as they mapped mysterious, distant, enthralling stars, imagining them to be the shining outlines of the Gods. He walked through a blizzard of subatomic particles bound in elaborate dance, traced his fingers along the gentle swirls of forming galaxies. He saw with perfect clarity that all of it, down the bloodlines of Jedi and Sith, had taken place precisely as had been necessary to engender Jacen Solo, the one who would break cycles.

As Vergere had said, love was merely the recognition that he was one with all things.

He loved everyone, everything, down into the deepest most sacred parts of his transforming being. His empathy was so terrible in intensity that he recalled Yun-Yuuzhan, who a desperate and forsaken group of beings believed to have made existence by cutting away parts of himself. He recalled Yun-Harla, having just performed the greatest trick in the history of the galaxy. He recalled Yun-Ne'shel, who tested and built and watched, and the twins Yun-Txiin and Yun-Q'aah, who impossibly found love in a profoundly empty and deeply indifferent universe. But above all he rediscovered Yun-Shuno in himself, the lone soul among gods who maintained a silent and eternal and merciful vigil over the suffering of all life—a God of forgiveness, the God of the Shamed. Like light contained all colors, he found himself a real and true manifestation of that ancient pantheon, and in their example he could see the outline of his new mission.

It was incredibly obvious to him now that matter and energy were utterly mutable, simply different forms of the Force manifesting, and, intuitively, he knew how easily he could create entire stars, worlds, life of his own design, beautiful and inimitable as Vergere's solitary flower—how perfectly, how gently he could tend the garden.

His choice, and his answer to a legacy of tragedy, a history of war, a galaxy full of broken governments and families, full of suffering and students and riddles, was to spend the rest of time dancing through the stars, watching, shaping, until that distant point when time itself would come to an end. When the stars themselves grew cold and dark, scattered to distances that made the space between galaxies look minuscule, he knew within himself the power to begin it all anew.

He had become eternal and ageless, unbound, but he returned to the moment where the change had taken place. It was with great effort that he anchored himself properly in time once more, at the moment after a lightsaber had disintegrated his heart.

In the Force, he felt the apprentice still standing over him, dripping sweat, on the edge of delirium, unsure of all save that the singular goal he had destroyed his old life to bring about had slipped his grasp forever in a solitary instant. The lightsaber was still humming in the empty space, and thin wisps of smoke were still rising from his eyes, and all around their battered bodies many wheels had broken. The crystal that focused the blade's beam into coherent energy cracked, then shattered at his gentle touch. The blade hissed, flashed, and then receded, never to cut again.

This was another part of his new and transcending art: all shatterpoints had become known to him.

The corpse of Jacen Solo rose as if lifted by invisible strings. He was incredibly and perfectly still and pale in the night, radiant and eternal over the battlefield that had remade him.

Ben was shaking, his eyes wide with terror—Jacen could now comprehend in the most intricate detail just how fragile his apprentice was, and just how close his body was to giving out—the full weight of his exertion in the battle began to wash over Ben in waves. For a flickering instant Ben was unsure if he would wake from the sleep that beckoned as his eyes jerked up and back into his head with the deepening shock. He quaked until he could no longer stand, and then he fell back, his eyes wide.

Jacen offered him a hand—fingers outstretched, beckoning.

"What are you?" Ben asked.

Jacen smiled, beguiling light moving within voids that had been his eyes.

"I am what I am," Jacen answered.

Ben stared back tiredly, like a hungry and cornered animal. Tentatively, he lifted his false arm to reach his master. At that moment it burst, hinging open at the elbow, shredding synthetic flesh, revealing the barrel of the high power blaster mechanism built into the false bone. A fraction of a second later, far faster than even Force-enhanced human capacity to react, the bolt should have disintegrated the head of Jacen Solo.

But within the intricate disorder of the superheated plasma careening towards him from the blackness of the barrel, Jacen now saw intuitively the potential matter within energy—he broke chemical bonds, built molecules, conducted the fusion and fission of elements with a watchmaker's precision, taking inside of his infinite self the excess energy he created in so doing—had he not, the forces at play would have manifested as an explosion large enough to consume miles and miles of Coruscant cityscape—large enough to ignite the planet's atmosphere. Seeing at last the perfection of Vergere's dying mission, he synthesized carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, in the most intricate and elegant interlocking structures—now he began to break down the dense metal alloy of the barrel, to provide footholds for roots—now he had forged a seed. Now, unbound by time, he watched it grow in the barrel, in light and soil and water that was himself, so that what had emerged in the fraction of a second since Ben had pulled the trigger was not a blaster bolt, but an inimitable work of a master artist, a sculptor of life—it was a single, immaculate white flower, blooming even as Ben's glassy eyes tracked down his ruined arm down to behold it.

Ben Skywalker stared down his arm, eyes wide with awe and anguish. He blinked once, and then again, as if somehow hoping to dispel the illusion. He pulled the trigger again, but Jacen had of course neutralized the potent combination of volatile compounds that constituted the blaster's ammunition—he had transmuted it into a handful of soil, as fertile as loam on Zonoma Sekot.

Ben stared at the flower, then at his master, still uncomprehending.

"My chains are broken; the Force," Jacen Solo said, as concurrently thousands of millions of flowers began to bloom, "has freed me."

Beyond the sweep of the cold marble throne room, green immediately began to overtake the grays and blacks and silvers of Coruscant—the rain began to fall into the night, clouded over in the blink of an eye—cleansing the air of the smoke tinge it had taken from the apocalypse below—and beyond came the rolls of first thunder.

Darth Caedus and the Force were now inextricably intertwined, and Ben Skywalker more than any other living being was able to understand the gravity and fullness of what had taken place. Only the body of Jacen Solo was dead—Jacen Solo was in the durasteel, the yorik coral, the air, in Ben Skywalker himself—Jacen Solo had died, but Jacen Solo would never die, because Jacen Solo was one with the Force in the truest and most final sense.

Jacen Solo had become the eternal avatar of life and death—or those forces had become the avatars of his singular will—Ben's perception was not sufficiently fine to delineate the subtle difference between the two possibilities.

"Together, we are much more than we were apart," Jacen said. "Words are so much less than the things that they describe. This is only the beginning."

Beyond the rain had already become a torrential downpour, a flood unlike any the world had seen since the days before it had become the glittering heart of galactic civilization. The water washed the suspended corpse of Jacen Solo and the sprawled figure of Ben Skywalker clean, and Jacen lowered his head, savoring the order within rain song. The flowers grew insatiably, roots boring deeper into duracrete and durasteel, catalyzing chemical transformation. What the Yuuzhan Vong had done in months, Jacen Solo did in moments—already buildings were beginning to quake, tremble, and fall, as their structures were fatally undermined—in the undercity, all the way down to the bedrock, the floodwater was turning canyons of duracrete into furious, all-consuming rivers. Already, beyond New Imperial Palace, Coruscant was scarcely recognizable—steel was turning to soil, and the deepest, darkest places of the world drank from the downpour. Distant lights winked out as sections of the planetary energy grid shuddered and failed under the incredible onslaught, and here and there fires began to rage—like insects airspeeders and spacecraft were bursting with the cracks of lightning, and fell in pieces into the cataclysm.

Under the deluge, the dust of the collapsing city-world did not hover in the air. It fell with the rainwater to where the flowers held dominion, transforming the works of mortal men into a garden without end. From his privileged position at the highest of heights, at the peak of the sole edifice safe from the catastrophe, it became clear to Ben that the flowers worked with impossible speed, bioengineered with skill that made Vongforming look infantile—their roots reached down, into the screaming mesh of shifting, collapsing steel, and made loam. The entire planet was roaring with the furious flow of water, groaning with the shifting of soft earth, screeching like tearing steel—an unspeakably enormous sound—and in a moment more all that Ben could see, out to the horizon, was a sea of white flowers without blemish or flaw, opening to meet the storm.

And he blinked, and it was once again the shining clear night over the world as he knew it, with dawn soon to come, over shattered steel and concrete and coral he found that he could now feel in the Force, where before there had been only blankness. The battle-frenzy below was receding, and great plumes of smoke rose out over the horizon as the fires raged. Sirens were beginning to echo.

"Did you—"

Jacen laughed.

"No, Ben. That was just a metaphor. I am going to do so much more than that."

Ben laughed, too, wincing against the pain laughing caused. In a gesture of surrender, Ben let the lightsaber he was clutching in a death grip with his broken fingers fall from his hand, so that he could clutch his mangled ribcage instead.

"I can't kill you," he groaned. "You're everything that I want to be."

"You still love me too much. Didn't I warn you about that, a long time ago?"

"Yes. I should have listened. Master, I have lost utterly. I'm ready to die. Let me go."

"You are correct that it is time for an ending between us. I think that this will conclude our test. I am ready to start."

Ben closed his eyes, taking shallow meditative breaths, waiting for the end to come. But after a long silence, he opened his eyes to see that the blind god of doorless cages had not moved from his miraculous repose over Coruscant, the world he had ruled and would rule still. Ben's vision was hazy, and he was unsure if the bold straight gleaming lines of Coruscant's great spires were beginning to bend and run together in actuality or only in his mind.

"Don't make me wait. I've lost. The master has no use for a failed apprentice."

"But it is in me that the Sith reach their stated end: dominion over life and death. The terms of the pact between us have been satisfied, and I have wasted too much life: life that I knew was dear to me, and life I had not yet realized was dear to me. I am your master no longer, Ben. You are free. Your will is your own. Many things are ending, including your time in servitude to me. And many new things are coming to be."

"But if I'm not Sith," he coughed, "Then what am I supposed to be? I have no name. I have no friends, no family, no one and nothing but the Sith and the Empire. How am I supposed to be free? This is the end of everything I am. Caedus—"

"Much closer to call me Jacen. It was easy to forget that I created Darth Caedus for a purpose. He died accomplishing that purpose."

"Jacen," Ben said, unfamiliar with the sound of that name, "It would be more merciful to let me die. I can't—"

"Ben. We are all lonely. We have all suffered. We are all afraid. We all made mistakes. And freedom is far more terrifying than slavery—believe me. You are forgetting one important thing: all you have to do is choose, and act, and these things, too, will pass."

Ben was staring at the flower still growing from his artificial arm. It was still growing, perpetually blossoming, somehow surging with the nourishment of splintered, synthetic bone.

"With your power," Ben asked, "is it possible to put an end to pain? That—that was all I ever wanted. I only wanted to make it all stop hurting. I only wanted for no one to hurt. Didn't I?"

"But there can be no end to pain, because there is no end to life. I won't make it stop hurting, but I will make that hurt a better teacher. I will make pain part of a better answer."

Ben coughed raggedly once more, and wiped the blood on his lips away with his broken hand.

"I can't go on," he breathed. "It's too much."

"You will go on, I think—I hope—" Jacen replied gently, "Because we have learned that this end was not enough for either of us. I know how you feel, Ben, very deeply. Death tempts you. Maybe you deserve it. Yet even still life remains your duty."

"I don't even have a name." Fury was welling up inside of Ben, made all the worse by the full knowledge of its futility. "I don't even have a name. How can I have a life? You know how much I sacrificed for you, for our vision, and now you tell me that I can walk away and start over—after half a life spent killing for you. It's all I am. Jacen. I can't go on."

"There is so much more in you than you realize. You are Ben Skywalker. To believe anything else is letting you off too easy. You have no need for a new name. You already have one, and it's not too late to make it back into one which you deserve."

"But—how am I—"

Jacen Solo silenced him with an inexplicably terrifying flicker of light within his dead eyes.

"Ben Skywalker, I have burned my consciousness into the mechanisms of eternity. I have pledged my entire being to the glory of the struggle. I chose, and there is great beauty in what I will do. I did it to free you, and my daughter, and all the rest that would have followed. I have broken the wheel. Our blood curse, our proclivity to break, forced a transformation on both of us. I have paid a great cost to shatter the power of such things forever, so that you and those to come may have the freedom to find and choose a way. You want to know how to live after what you've done. You seek a part of you that isn't stained, a place where you won't be met with fear. You won't find those things here, in the rubble of our follies and our small victories. Those answers aren't going to come from the Sith, or the Jedi, because those are things of the past. The answers you want are in and of that which is yet to come. Your answers are out there, Ben, waiting for you," he said, gesturing towards the infinite bounty of the waning night sky.

Ben's eyes were watering, glassy, drifting in and out of focus, but he smiled wryly up at Jacen Solo.

"So much for the Rule of Two."

"No, so much for the Sith. In its way the Rule of Two lives, and will live, because there will always be teachers and students."

"But how can our way be over? Isn't the final lesson—the first lesson—still sacrifice? In the end, you've sacrificed everything, haven't you?"

"Is it what the teacher teaches, or what the student learns? So many of our sacrifices were lies. We offered up others, and we pretended that we were offering up ourselves. That was always the falseness at the heart of the Sith. We killed, and acted like we were saving—we wanted to be masters over life and death, and we wasted both. The true sacrifice is the lesson that has survived with me. The true sacrifice is nothing more or less than the sacrifice of the self, for the sake of another—that which your mother did for you, all those years ago, and that which I have now carried out. It's a hard lesson, for we who have have lingered too long in the land of the dead. We, who grew our flowers even as we became weeds. We, who paid our terrible costs, and convinced ourselves that they were bargains all the same. Shadowmoths and song—and maybe all this time has only been forcing the ichor into our wings. For all we did, we have only now emerged from the land of the dead and into the bounty of life. Do I only now really realize that love is just the recognition that two are one? And well begun—" Jacen stopped himself, smiling. "Forgive me, Ben. There is so much waiting. For both of us, I promise you that it will be a beginning to end endings."

"You believe—you know—that it can all be fixed." Ben seemed to relax at the thought, a little of the quivering tension wracking his struggling body seeming to recede. "How often I wondered if your riddles had answers. How often I wondered if everything I believed was a lie."

"Yes. No. Listen. I have come into the knowledge of all answers, save one. I know now that I am, and always was, Jacen Solo. But still I wonder: what are you?"

Ben coughed, a wracking cough that began as a laugh and ended with shallow gasps.

"Maybe—no. I am Ben Skywalker, but not the Ben Skywalker I was. It isn't much, master, but I think that can be what I still have to teach you. That I want to make my name something that fits me, again. That I can still be better than what I was. That is what I am, and that is what I can show you."

"I am eager to see it, even though I now know that you will meet my high expectations, and then exceed them by far. It is time to go, Ben. It's not a parting of ways between us, not at all, but it is a great change. For now, there is still much more for you to discover, and teach, and become, and I find myself anxious to be left to my work. We have brought the Rule of Two to its necessary and natural conclusion—how could it have ever ended, but with a broken wheel? Was it what the teacher taught, or what the student learned? Ben, my student—my son—for us, we have come into knowledge so much greater. You have suffered. You will suffer. In that, you are lucky, because life is pain. Life is also a miracle. That you opened that door, that lurch of fate, and I passed through—Luke was so much more right about redemption than I ever knew. Go and be part of this great thing that we made together, which we do not deserve but which we found all the same—an opportunity to be better than what we were. Go, and I will remake this world, as you will remake yourself, into something more and more perfect. In our blindness—in our wrongness—we, together, made a miracle. It is as much yours as mine, and you deserve to be part of it. I have done unpardonable things to you, Ben Skywalker. I ruined what you were, buried so much of what was good in you, and I remade it as a reflection of my own brokenness and tiredness. You are strong, Ben Skywalker. Those parts of you aren't gone. You will find them again, and you will join them with the new, and you will stand, and you will be a living proof that life can persist, and learn, and change. That pain can't be defeated, perhaps—it's too much a part of us—but it can become a friend."

"Jacen—"

"I am proud of you for doing this, Ben. You will make me prouder."

Jacen offered his hand again, and this time Ben took it. Though he was too weak to stand on his own, the Force was pliant with the presence of his former master, and it gave him the strength to walk. Ben lowered his eyes, and turned and limped down the long and ruined chamber, towards the great doors that had fallen, before he thought to look back to his master, who was suspended in the air before the cityscape of Coruscant at dawn, trembling. Jacen's back was turned as he held himself still in the whipping wind in profile, a single transcending man at the locus of the jutting dagger of Imperial Palace and the waning Path of the Gods and the flowing steel daggers cleaving the brightening sky.

"Jacen?" He whispered.

"Ben."

"Is life worth saving?"

"More than you know. I required just one test—I hid one thing from myself in the transformation, and it became known to me when you made your choice. I know that life is worth saving, because I now know what you are going to become. Ben Skywalker, you will be nothing less than my living proof."

Ben smiled, looking in that moment as young as he truly was. "Well begun is half done, right? I don't expect it to be easy. I don't expect it to come quickly. But I think that I can use what I am to help others, and I think I can become something different—better. I— I want to talk to people again, Jacen. I want to hear them, and I want them to hear me. I want to care about them again. And now I can."

Jacen turned from his wordless reprieve, surging with silent majesty. He smiled in turn.

"My daughter chose to use her life to heal," Jacen Solo said, "And now so has my son. Our galaxy is becoming right."

Ben bowed his head in silent acknowledgment, before he turned again, blinking away tears at the magnificence of life which had so utterly surprised him. He limped through the wreckage, past the great and fallen doors, and he did not have to look back again to know that his master was rising up into appointed place in the glorious dawn at last, smiling still.

—

Joyfully, Jacen Solo slipped the tenuous bond of gravity, shrugged off all shackles, and went out over the fragile world that had been the heart of his crude attempt at Empire. There, on a planet long ago named for the beguiling gleam of a gem, he found delicate and precious things of steel and flesh commingled, and he knew how to fix them. He was to be a primal God, not distant or cold but a towering inferno, an immediate and consummate beacon to all living things—he was to fix the privations at last, to dance over a thousand thousand worlds, healing. Joy washed over him still, for life was joy and pain commingled into glory—he suffered and laughed as he darted between steel towers that were as fragile as drawings in the sand, reshaping. It was as if the laws that governed the hardness of steel and the immutability of matter had been forever shattered—in his wake Jacen Solo left edifices of impossible twisting beauty bound by his will alone, wreathed with the most immaculate flowers, weaving the lives huddled within the writhing of metal like blossoming petals—but it was not enough to contain what he had become, all the slightest expression of the capacity for artistry within him, and he was dancing over the worlds that had made him, there too becoming the greatest of gardeners.

Tired and destitute Corellians, an old and profoundly lonely scoundrel among them, watched their dead cities redrawn by invisible shaping hands, as rain fell over molten glass towers rising from ancient Tattooine sand, and the pieces of Alderaan and Endor that he and his grandfather had shattered began to fall inward towards rebirth in a firestorm of creation, while the living world Zonama Sekot bloomed breathless at his familiar touch, like quivering with the pleasure of meeting one greater than itself at last. On Csilla he was a colossus moving over the frozen surface, and forests were rising from new seas yet steaming up out of millennial glaciers, and the Chiss were throwing down their arms before him. There was to be no more war between brothers, for all living things were brother fools, and he their steward.

And all this was the merest beginning. His pure, clean laughter abolished the solitude of Vergere's tomb world forever, and he, proud at her side, began to instruct his teacher in the finer art of making life. He was there at the bedside of his wife, wrapped in his cloak, as she woke from troubled sleep to a Force that was utterly changed—a Force that was entirely changed, and yet had not changed at all.

"This is all part of it," he said to Tenel Ka, his queen, the woman who would be his true love forever. He knew that she would somehow understand, on waking, and that she would once again offer up all of herself to try to stay his infinite misery for just a moment—and that, somehow, in spite of the sheer impossibility of her task, she would succeed. He had already fixed her arm, turned synthetic flesh real, the first of so many gifts he would give her. He had not yet anticipated the warmth within her gaze, as it opened from sleep, and the joy in her to see him, or the joy within himself to know so deeply that she was so providently and wonderfully alive. He took her hand, made hers again, and he knew he would love her more and more with time.

He appeared to his only daughter while she made desperate rounds in the chaos of the overflowing burn ward of Coruscant General Hospital, heavy with the smell and stain of death, performing silent triage like an angel of judgment, like she with rust red locks and sad gray eyes was a lone candle in the darkness.

But there was no dark, no dark at all—everything was alive, and all life was precious to him, the steward of that sacred morning. The shadows all around them began to peel away, and the blood, and the scarred flesh.

He was the Lord of Fools, born absent eyes or heart, born broken with broad jaw and pale skin, with dark bags beneath eyes blacker still with char. The Lord of Fools, who had taken up an eternal task before he knew eternity, who looked upon his daughter among the dead and dying and almost wept for how priceless she was, how like himself, and how worth it his great sacrifice was and would forever be, because here and now among terminal patients she had never been so free to move and heal and live as she had chosen, as unbound as he had promised her, and now he was fully resolved, moving and holding her as she stared up with her mother's eyes and his own empathy, innately understanding, and in her features facets of his mother and father, uncle, grandfather, who had yielded to time and left him sovereign and solitary, with her against his coldness, breathing against his stillness, and how he loved her, and how right she would be in time and age, as teacher and mother, and how she, and all the life they would tend, would persist with him in defiance of abnegation, when all the worlds heretofore known had passed from being into memory.

The blind god of wheels and gardeners, weeds and flowers, men and fools—those named, and those waiting to be named—a father and a student, broken and breaking, asked his daughter to live in his stead, and live without regret or hesitation or fear, with the full knowledge that the future ahead for her and indeed for all living things was moving towards perfection. All around them the dying and the dead were coming up healed, weeping for the glory of a second chance, not just in the burn ward but across the mending surface of Coruscant and throughout a wounded galaxy, and Allana Solo was crying too, in the understanding that she had been spared her awful appointed place in a brutal cycle, and that it was a miracle dearly purchased and a promise dearly kept, and she was saying yes father I will live, yes, and we will help you, so that you will not suffer forever, and nothing in it was in vain, and the walls and floors were beginning to flow like liquid, with the dying given life throwing themselves at the feet of their true and final Emperor, the fool, and then the walls fell away entirely, and they were rising like the first space faring vessels of man over the clear and miraculous Coruscant dawn, over a remade skyscape, him holding her, and the Path above was being rewoven once again, like long rainbow threads joining in tapestry, like the font of life spilling forth, never to cease, and it was all beauty upon beauty compounding, all becoming only right, and on a thousand worlds gentle and true reshaping, as Tenel Ka held him like that first morning, trying to ease his infinite suffering, somehow succeeding, and he murmuring that everything would be okay, and the Chiss with quiet awful dignity presenting their unconditional surrender, and the ghost of Vergere musing that fate had no kindness at all for the great, and he saying that he would make some for them.

The student, Ben Skywalker, stumbled through halls of melting glass and shifting sand, past guards and courtiers who had abandoned their posts to watch the changing Coruscant with awe, as if they had slipped from life into a waking dream, took a familiar X-Wing from the Emperor's private hangar, where grasping vines were surging over the mirror polish of the steel, and he escaped that foreign but familiar world of crystal and flowing steel and flowers even as thousands of ships drew down from orbit to experience the garden world becoming, and he jumped into deep space, with the flower still growing from his mangled arm, and there he drifted with ease that surprised him into a deep exhausted healing trance, and there he dreamed that his mother and father, the ones he had betrayed, were speaking to him, and forgiving him, and telling him that atonement was possible, as they had atoned for costly mistakes, and that even if he could never be the boy he had been again he could become something better still, and that he too had a part in all the works of the transcending universe, and that he too could teach, and serve—heal—and in that haze of dream, as his battered body began to mend according to the Force that was Jacen Solo's will, he knew that they had never left him but had only been waiting for the right moment to come back in, and he was saying that he could do it too, in his weakness, though he had failed in so many ways, though his breaking had been complete and his fall had been total, he could teach, and be that flower, and grow flowers, and in his own small way, in the model of his immortal and suffering master, begin to atone for what he had done.

It would take all he had to give, but that was a cost he accepted. It would be a miniscule contribution to the enormity of Jacen Solo's garden universe, but it would be uniquely his: Ben and Ben alone could return to the intricate and enormous glory a Skywalker once again worthy of that storied name, a beacon of hope in a universe where hope would no longer be the exception to the rule.

He woke a long time later, scarred and battered, and he felt empty, wonderfully empty—like he was once again a vessel, waiting to be filled—as he opened himself to the unceasing benevolence of the stars.

—

Still, the teacher—the student— is teaching, and learning, and fixing, at the end of his bloodline's curse, and at the beginning of an empire that will not end. Bound to break bindings, he thinks, exploring intricate crystalline patterns of cells dividing. His grandfather could have never envisioned that it would all end like this, and begin anew in the same moment, when he had, blindly, wreathed with shifting possibility, turned the wheel that ended the Old Republic, or when he had defined a changing Jacen Solo by whispering to his grandson through the Force so many years ago, at the tipping of a great balance point, to stand fast. His wife and his daughter are crying for him, and he is saying that it will be all right. The shadow of Vergere is crying too, as he restores her to new life, and her tears are real again, as they are feeding flowers, whispering songlike in her inhuman familiar way that he had found her an answer to pain, a better way, after all.

It will be all right: time will erase the scars wrought by Skywalkers, and the scars of a long and terribly costly battle waged for eons by beings groping in darkness, empowered by the Force but only beginning to comprehend their ability to become it. Life will remain, freer. He is glad, truly and deeply glad.

Still his flowers will reach the Unknown Regions, and galaxies beyond, where wonders upon wonders await, and still war will end for all time. He is telling the gathered representatives of the five families of the Chiss, aboard a flowering warship, above a flowering world, that he has no terms, save that they take their rightful place in the song. A day will come when it will be scarcely remembered that Jacen Solo was once a man.

It will be all right.

Life goes on.

Tattooine has become a place of molten glass and rain, and Corellia shines once more, as it had, with the mechanisms of Centerpoint Station failing as colonizing plantlife surges, basking beneath the Glowpoint. Zonoma Sekot prepares itself for the journey back to the known galaxy, where it and its wards may better take part in the transformation, and the accreting molten infernos of the remains of the forest moon of Endor and Alderaan will one day live again. Matter is a handful of sand scattered across infinite emptiness, but this only spurs him on—he is in every grain, lonely and priceless, and there is the work of perfecting to undertake.

His many victims, a legion of the dead, watch his unique arrival in a land apart, a plane of existence tangential to the reality of the living. There are too many to count—Jedi and men and Yuuzhan Vong are there remembered, remembering. They are all part of his family. His sister stands first among them. He walks towards her, with both of them so much changed from the manifold freedom and potential of their youth. He walks towards her first, among all of the life that he has squandered in his blindness, though it is all only beginning, and the time will come for a reconciliation with all of them. He draws near to Jaina Solo, exalting in her eyes and hands and gaze, in all respects his twin, even still, as full of understanding as she had been on the day he murdered her. She, and all of them, were really parts of himself, and his capacity for love was bottomless. Life had surprised Jacen Solo. Life had surprised all of them.

Jacen Solo is holding a wrinkled hand in his own, in a slum in Coronet that is becoming a place of water and light and wind, feeling the pulse within, knowing it as part of himself. Han Solo is an old man, and he shakes with shock—he has been afraid and alone and desperate for such a long time, in what has so much felt to him a waking nightmare without end. His son holds him, and can scarcely begin to express the extent to which he missed him in the lonely dark. His son can scarcely begin to say how sorry he is.

Jacen Solo is remembering morning on a Coruscant that had not yet been made jungle or garden, and sunset on Yavin IV, and how it had been to live without fear or hate, without the distance that had grown between himself and those around him—how it had been to live free from plots within plots, outside of prescience, without being caged inside of his own plans and his own surging power—he is remembering when he could reach out and in the ambient warmness of the Force feel a whole family of living things that did not fade into silence at his touch. He is remembering the fascination of life, life in all of its beautiful impossible forms, opening to him—the first time he had really felt the joy of the shadowmoth as it left the cage, and went out the window into the vibrant night—how it all had come to pass again, and how sad and wrong he had been to ever let go of it, and how blessed he was, how blessed this provident universe was, for it was possible to return once more.

"I remember," he tells his sister.

His smile is sad, his presence is filling more and more with clean and boundless joy.

She embraces him, and they are what they had always been, though too long denied—halves of a whole.

When he feels a firm hand on his shoulder a long time later, still in embrace, he knows that his brother has been waiting.

Only then do the tears begin to well up, a long time in coming, in Jacen Solo's ruined eyes. Only then, in the embraces of his father, sister, wife, and daughter, does he finally begin to cry.

So much is yet to come, and so much has never ended, and will go on, and Jacen Solo loves life more and more with every passing moment. He takes his daughter's hand at the peak of Coruscant's peaks, meets her eyes, which are so much his own—he takes her hand, which is so warm against his coldness, and together they walk down the Path, towards the dawn. He begins to tell her everything: a great history of fools.

The first thing Jacen Solo tells his daughter, who will be a doctor, is that the universe is a garden without weeds.


End file.
